


Pre-Christmas

by WackyGoofball



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, Awkward Romance, Awkwardness, Banter, Best Friends, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Comedy, F/M, Falling In Love, Feels, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, Oneshot, Romance, Secret Santa, a bit of it, also gone wrong, at times - Freeform, gone wrong, i try at least, long oneshot, never stir it yo, wrong usage of candy canes and beer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 20:17:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17128067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WackyGoofball/pseuds/WackyGoofball
Summary: Jaime is out with Bronn and Tyrion to celebrate the annual pre-Christmas, though he is anything but in a festive mood.Ever since a certain incident at his favorite gym's Christmas party involving a poorly chosen gift, Jaime is at odds with his best friend Brienne.Though he may have to come up with a solution fast when an angelic entourage enters the bar.





	Pre-Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isola_Caramella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isola_Caramella/gifts).



> Hello everyone, thanks for being brave enough to look into this very long Christmas fic. It was supposed to be shorter, but then... it got as far as it got, so here we are. Anyway. This was written as part of JBO's annual Secret Santa gift exchange. 
> 
> Lovely Isola gave me the following words to work with: yoga, white and bars.
> 
> That is the best I could come up with. I hope you enjoy, darling, I gave it all that I have. 
> 
> I am combining some book elements as well, just like I twist them around a bit to fit into where I am giong for in this fic, so please don't judge that some happenings in the story conveniently fall together time-wise for my own evil plotting purposes. :D
> 
> In the spirit of the season, I thus also use the opportunity to not only wish Isola the happiest of Christmases but the rest of you guys as well. I hope you have a lovely time, whether you celebrate or not - or celebrate something entirely different. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

Christmas.

It’s always a special time of the year, perhaps the most special of them all. Hardly any other holiday will change the entire look of cities and small towns, will change the smells in supermarkets and houses, will change people’s routines even in a city as busy as King’s Landing.

And apparently, it has the power to drive an entire nation mad with hunting down Christmas presents to the best prices at the last minute and Christmas markets with fake fir tree decoration clogging up the traffic in the entire city.

Jaime never thought of himself as a Christmas person, in fact, he actually prides himself being a “Christmas downer,” as he found himself being accused a good number of times around the office.

Part of it is certainly owed to the circumstance that he _hates_ the commercialization of the holiday. Jaime despises that they start selling Christmas cookies late in the summer already – because who wants to eat cookies and drink mulled wine when you can still walk around in shorts and T-shirt? He hates it that the industry – his family industry very much included – only ever sees that special time of the year as a way to boost their sales figures. And he hates it that people still fall for it because Christmas grew to be competitive. You have to outdo yourself and others with the gifts. What matters is that you don’t end up being the loser under the Christmas tree.

And only a _truly_ sick person could ever come up with a drink such as eggnog in his humble opinion. If Jaime wanted to drink something of _that_ consistency, it should _certainly_ not taste of egg and spices.

However, most of Jaime’s apathy of the Christmas Madness relates to the family.

_How else could it be?_

Born a Lannister, troubles of that sort seem to be inherent to the DNA. First, there was his mother’s death when Cersei and Jaime were still young children and Tyrion was only just born. That left scars, of course, and Tywin Lannister didn’t really do anything to put ointment on that wound so scar tissue could grow. Instead, Christmases were continued as a strange kind of charade: Their father, to this day, will invite family as well as important business partners and potential investors who are not tied to their families to come to the Lannister Residence and celebrate Christmas in grandeur fashion. From golden sashes and brocade, a tree as high as supposedly dragons used to be, over to extravagant dinners at tables too large for a child to even sit up straight at, let alone spot so much as a close family member, all is there and more.

_Just no actual Christmas._

As children, they didn’t have much of a choice but live with the nonsense that was the Christmas time as Tywin Lannister designed it, framed it, learned to use it for his own gain, even at the risk of the happiness of his offspring. It wasn’t until they were adults that the siblings realized just how inherently wrong all of it was and still is. Not that the knowledge or understanding of that circumstance changed much. Quite on the contrary, it only ever made Jaime realize what he was missing out on without a chance of ever getting it: this sense of a home, this sense of finally making it back to the family after not seeing them for so very long.

Arriving somewhere, a place you know.

Being around the people you want most in your life.

Being around the people you love most.

Coming home, and staying there.

But those are not the qualities Tywin Lannister seeks in a Christmas party. Only for matters of upholding the image of a perfect family, which they couldn’t be further away from: Tyrion is a functioning alcoholic who never quite stomached the emotional abuse he suffered at the hands of his father and, to Jaime’s great grievance in particular, his sister who, to this day, consider Tyrion a monster. Cersei is a not at all functioning alcoholic. While Jaime was happy for her when she finally broke up with Robert, because that whoring bastard was about as good for her as she was with him, it didn’t make things much better about her in the end. The woman cut her hair and became a walking disaster in a short period of time. Cersei dove into the family company and suddenly wanted to lead all of it, as though she was a recently crowned queen, though Tywin Lannister would not let her so long he lives. That whole drama resulted in her going on a trip to Pyke to meet with the Greyjoys for a deal no one really cared about, only to discover the strange passion for this Euron Greyjoy person. Ever since, their sister ditches any responsibility to go wild with the Ironborn, which means responsibility is not the only thing she screws as of late.

Jaime will gladly give his blessings to that union, so long Cersei leaves him out of the drama. That much is for sure. Though drama is sure to come, considering that Cersei wants to bring the guy along and Father _firmly_ told her that it was not an option, granted that Euron was de facto not in charge of the company and he is set inviting Yara Greyjoy – who is the head of the company since her father’s passing.

“That would not mix well,” was their father’s only comment regarding the matter, seemingly convinced that this was the end of the discussion, when Jaime knows for a fact that it was only just the beginning for Cersei.

Tyrion and he are _pretty_ sure that she will bring Euron. If only to spite their father.

So no, Jaime is not a particular fan of the Christmas season.

It only ever gives him this sense of missing out on what that holiday _could_ be like if only he was not born into this mad family he calls his own.

The sad testament thus is that Tyrion and he have a secret “pre-Christmas,” as they call it, to have at least one holiday of the season that they spend in the company of people they like without the expectation of turning a Christmas dinner into a business deal once all return to the office.

And so, for the last couple of years, the tradition has been that Tyrion and he go out, sometimes alone, sometimes with a few friends if they have the time, to hit the bars, have a good time, enjoy themselves as they drink nasty bear with cinnamon flavored syrup added, talk, jest, or watch a game.

To simply feel like they belong somewhere, together.

No show, just them and no one else to impress.

This year, the turnout was not as great as it was last time, though. Jaime was hoping that some of the friends he made at the gym could be convinced, as a good number of them are single and have no family attachment that would keep them from a small drinking spree on the night before Christmas.  

_So much to that._

Thus, here he sits now, huddled over a beer with a candy cane hanging out of the glass, right next to his brother helping himself to yet another glass of cinnamon liquor, and opposite the one gym friend who actually followed the invitation – Bronn Blackwater. Bronn is someone Jaime actually knows not just from the gym but is also an acquaintance of Tyrion’s. The dark-haired man does odd jobs at the company without asking too many questions, something Tyrion as well as their father very much appreciate about him. He is always there for the kind of comment that may bear some greater truth but that you don’t always want to hear. Thus, one could say he is a friend of the family.

_Though he is certainly just here for the free drinks._

“Jaime, you know that I love you like any brother loves his own, but you just stirred the beer with the candy cane decoration. That is a waste of perfectly good beer and I have to put an end to it!” Tyrion breaks out, pulling Jaime away from distant memories of sad Christmases over to the bar of their choice.

He always liked the bar, comes here on the weekends to watch games. Jaime likes the atmosphere of the place. It’s small but strangely familiar. He knows the bartender by name and the decoration is just to his liking: dark wooden benches, glass stained windows, and green and brown leather seats. Thankfully, they play it low on the Christmas decoration here. After all, to their credit, they keep it relatively simple: Only a few lights dangling in the window frames, some fake fir attached to the top of the door and the bartender wearing a cheap-looking Christmas hat as he hands out the drinks. In the background, some festive-sounding tunes hum over the loudspeakers.

The perfect kind of setting for a pre-Christmas in his humble opinion. Or at the very least – the best it ever got since they came up with their little tradition.

“Hm?” Jaime blinks, looking up from his glass to realize only now that he is indeed stirring his beer with said candy cane decoration, which should really have _no_ business being attached to a beer now that he thinks about it.

“Did you leave your brain at the gym or what’s the matter?” Bronn scoffs, taking a sip from his own drink.

“In a way, one could say that,” Jaime huffs woefully.

And that even though the gym should be his refuge.

_So much to that. Oh, what a merry Christmas I have this year!_

“Wait, so _you_ know what this is about?” Tyrion gapes. “And I keep probing him for information for the past weeks without getting any new information!”

Bronn just shrugs at him, as usual, unable to bother to care. “You didn’t ask me.”

“Well, now I do,” the other man demands. “You see this is an urgent matter if beer goes to waste because of that!”

“He’s here himself, ask him,” Bronn scoffs.

“You are not at all helpful!” Tyrion complains.

“Good,” Bronn huffs. “I am not trying to be.”

Tyrion sucks in air through his nostrils, sitting up a little straighter as he turns his attention back to his older sibling. “So, brother, what happened that you left your brains at the gym to stir beer instead? Because you screw the mood, and I may remind you that this is our actual Christmas, and it is the only one we will get, you may remember.”

“This isn’t even proper Christmas, if we are being perfectly honest. We get piss drunk and pass out on either one’s couch,” Jaime scoffs, running his left hand over his face with a tight grimace.

_And isn’t that sad?_

“What else would you do on Christmas?” Tyrion asks, making a face.

“He has troubles with his girlfriend,” Bronn jumps in, much to Jaime’s annoyance.

Because he would much rather not think, let alone talk about it.

In fact, Jaime would like to erase the entire month of December and start over new. You know a man is at his lowest when he starts to stir his beer with a candy cane, simple as that.

“She is _not_ my girlfriend,” Jaime corrects the dark-haired man, making sure to keep his voice leveled.

“And ain’t you disappointed about that,” Bronn mutters into his drink, which Jaime only ever rewards with another.

“Wait, _now_ you decide to talk?” Tyrion complains.

“I signed up for drinks, not Jeopardy. And it drives me nuts how pretty boy keeps stirring the beer,” Bronn announces before reaching across the table to take the candy cane away from Jaime, unceremoniously throwing it behind himself.

“Hey!” someone shouts, but Bronn Blackwater could not care less.

“Very much in Christmas spirit,” Jaime snorts, shaking his head.

“It’s no pre-Christmas unless someone gets assaulted by a candy cane,” Tyrion comments, helping himself to another sip of his booze. He ordered a bottle right from the start.

After all, they now have their own Christmas traditions.

_Well, pre-Christmas traditions._

“Could we come back to the actual topic here? So is it that you and Brienne are having a fight that you act so weird on pre-Christmas?” Tyrion demands to know, being his usual investigative, know-it-all self.

“Brienne is _not_ my girlfriend,” Jaime repeats, rolling his eyes as far back as is physically possible.

“She is the only friend you have who happens to be a girl… in fact, she is the only actual friend you have,” Tyrion argues.

“Bronn is supposed to be my friend, too,” Jaime argues, gesturing at the other man sitting across from him, though he only ever shakes his head. “I am just here for the money.”

“Almost forgot,” Jaime snorts.

“What happened between the two of you?” Tyrion questions.

“He fucked up,” Bronn scaffolds, though he is certainly not being asked for it.

Jaime sucks his lower lip into his mouth with a popping sound. “If you want to tell my story, then why don’t you just go ahead instead of only ever dropping bits and pieces, hm?”

“You just don’t get to the point, pretty boy,” Bronn argues.

Jaime leans back on the bench, going through his options. If he continues in silence, they will keep probing him. If he tells them, they will know, Bronn will tease him even more, and Tyrion will want to play smart by offering advice Jaime doesn’t want to hear.

_There is just no way of winning, it seems. Another Christmas tradition, let us rejoice!_

“Fine, _fine_ , if only so that you will shut up about it and leave me in peace: Yes, Brienne and I had a bit of a trouble last time at the gym,” he says at last.

Certainly an understatement, but Jaime learned to play his cards wisely.

“Did she beat you in a fight and you started to cry?” Tyrion teases.

“When has that ever happened?” the older brother scoffs.

“According to Bronn, more often than you’d like to admit.”

“She was _not_ beating me and I was _not_ crying, for Seven’s sake,” Jaime grumbles.

_I should have stayed home and get piss drunk in the comfort of my condo._

“Then what caused the fallout?” Tyrion asks, now with more sincerity.

“Dirty Secret Santa,” Jaime sighs.

“Oh, I did not know you two were into that kind of stuff,” Tyrion laughs. “Yet anyway.”

Jaime shoves him lightly in the side. “Not what you think, you lech. It’s when you exchange shitty gifts instead of actual ones for the fun of it.”

“Ohhhh, I thought that is simply what our Christmases are all about,” Tyrion huffs. “Like that one time Cersei got me a ticket to a far-away island, hoping I’d stay there.”

“No, _normal_ people who are no Lannisters do that on occasion. The rest of the gym wanted to do something for the Christmas party before it closes down for the year. And so people voted for Dirty Secret Santa instead of… what were the other choices?” Jaime ponders. “Oh right. Daven handed out cards with the options. The others were to have someone play punching bag for all the rest, or what he coined as Christmas Spirits, which translated to everyone bringing as much booze as possible… and emptying it all out.”

“I would have chosen the last,” Tyrion chuckles.

Jaime shakes his head. “Of course.”

“I chose the one in the middle and wrote your name as a suggestion for a punching bag underneath,” Bronn comments.

“ _Of course_ ,” Jaime huffs. “Anyway, Dirty Secret Santa it was, and so everyone got to draw a name from Daven’s old, sweaty Santa hat. And for that person, you were supposed to get a dirty, thus shitty, unfitting, present.”

Tyrion shakes his head. “Sometimes I wonder how you are even a Lannister, considering that you work out in one of the shabbiest places I ever heard passed as a gym.”

“Don’t insult the gym,” Jaime hisses.

No, in fact, this gym is Jaime’s refuge, or rather, it grew to be. When Daven told him that he should come with to his gym, Jaime always politely declined. Back in those days, he went to one of those modern places with the nicest of machines and where you mostly find the kinds of guys who want to define just that certain muscle because of the aesthetic.

But then the accident happened and Jaime just couldn’t stand the stares anymore after he dared to come back to a gym outside physio therapy for the first time. He didn’t want to go out into public anyway, but his gym became a place he didn’t feel welcome at anymore.

_Because cripples always get the stares._

Thus, at last, he took up Daven on his offer to train with him at the “shitty but golden” gym. And that was when Jaime felt right in a place again for the first time ever since he got out of the hospital. It didn’t take Jaime long to fall in love with the place, with its strange charm hiding under broken wooden benches and an interior that may well pass for an abandoned prison, to. He fell in love with it not because it is pretty to look at, _far from it_. It’s as Tyrion says – it’s shabby, it stinks of cold concrete, sweat, and the old heater that does not really heat the place well.

What made Jaime fall for that place was the people. In a city as high-class as King’s Landing, it was refreshing to train next to normal folks who were just there for the sport, for the workout, and to see their friends. It was nice to be instantly welcomed and not be seen as Jaime Lannister, but just as a guy who wanted to beat up the punching bag, no matter how ridiculous that looked with only just one hand.

And it was a relief to simply train, no one minding his business and struggles with the punching bag. No one bothered when Jaime roared at the thing for not working how it used to back in the days when he could have made it as a semi-professional boxer, no bother. No one cared, he was left alone, he was accepted just like he accepted everyone else in that place. And that made him fall for the gym.

_And then there was Brienne…_

“I would never mean to insult the gym. I know that this place is close to a temple in your book. So okay, Dirty Secret Santa it was. Now, how does all that relate to Brienne and your trouble with her?” Tyrion wants to know.

“I drew her name. So I had to get her a gift,” Jaime answers.

Bronn laughs out loud. “And he truly outdid himself.”

“I am telling the story right now, so you can leave your comments to yourself.”

“I found it hilarious!” Bronn giggles, leaning back on the bench.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Jaime sighs heavily. “I wanted to get a _really_ shitty gift for her. After all, it was supposed to be Dirty Secret Santa. I stumbled over an ad online where they sold tickets for what they called _Winter Yoga_ , which, as it turned out, is basically a bunch of people freezing their balls and lady bits off because they do yoga outside in the snow… in that kind of clothing.”

“Okay,” Tyrion says, furrowing his eyebrows.

“Brienne loathes yoga with a burning passion, I know that. So I thought this was perfectly shitty for her. I booked a free training session for the Winter Yoga, and to top it all off, I got her an outfit to go along with that,” Jaime recounts.

Back then, it felt like a fabulous idea.

_But Seven Hells was I wrong with that._

“So… yoga pants, I’d assume,” Tyrion suggests, helping himself to yet another refill.

“Not just yoga pants,” Bronn laughs. “As I said, he outdid himself.”

“No, not just yoga pants… I wish I had stuck to that… Those were premium thermal yoga clothes… a shirt… and leggings… and… hot pants… fitting very closely to the body…”

“Surely wasn’t cheap, even though they looked like it,” Bronn snorts.

“They cost a small fortune, but hey, I didn’t want her to freeze to death for the Winter Yoga. But yeah, I thought the outfit had to _really_ fit the theme… so the patterns were a Christmas collection. It was a white leggings with silver stars and snowflakes. A tight sports bra with reindeers. And red hot pants with Santas all over the little piece of clothing.”

“Festive,” Tyrion chuckles softly.

“I was surprised by the variety of Christmas-themed yoga wear, actually,” Jaime points out pensively.

“So… that still doesn’t explain how it all came to a fallout leading to you being such a poor sport for our pre-Christmas event,” Tyrion argues.

“I… misunderstood one detail about the rules of Dirty Secret Santa,” Jaime admits, chewing on his lower lip.

“What detail?”

“I thought we would just exchange the gifts. I did not know we’d get together in a circle and everyone would have to unwrap the gift in front of the rest of the guys in grandeur kind of fashion,” the older brother explains.

“Pretty boy never played Dirty Secret Santa, apparently,” Bronn teases.

He shakes his head. “I did not, no.”

“So… Brienne unwrapped the yoga pants…,” Tyrion sighs.

“In front of everyone, yes,” Jaime says, nodding his head. “And the guys were even cheering her on a bit, so… Brienne was not really pleased when she unwrapped those tight, revealing clothes in front of them, you might be able to imagine.”

“What did she do?” Tyrion asks.

“She quietly put it back in the package and blankly stared at me because she could be sure that I was the one who gave her that oh so shitty gift.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “I wrote ‘wench’ on the card.”

“You are even too dumb for Secret Santa, aren’t you?” Bronn shakes his head.

“She would have known anyway. Because I am one of the few who knows just how deep her hatred for the sport runs. So yeah, after the Dirty Secret Santa was over, Brienne got a call from the office, at least she said so, I don’t know if she just made an excuse to escape the situation, and fled before I could even talk to her about it,” Jaime laments.

And that was the end of the Christmas party – and apparently any kind of Christmas spirit Jaime ever could have had. Because ever since, he spent his days fussing over it even though he tries not to let people know.

“Did you try to talk to her since?” Tyrion questions quietly.

“I left a couple of text messages and called a few times, but I only ever got the answering machine,” the older man answers.

Though truth be told, he doesn’t even know what he would have said, had she picked up the phone.

_Hey, Brienne, about the yoga pants another time… Yeah, not such a great intro, right?_

“Did you go to her apartment?” the younger man questions.

“Did you bring a beatbox and a trenchcoat?” Bronn adds.

“No and… most certainly no,” Jaime retorts, shaking his head. He really should have kept that to himself and just keep stirring the damned beer.

“Why didn’t you go to her apartment, then?” Tyrion keeps asking.

“Because he may roar like a lion but actually is a little kitten,” Bronn snickers.

“She barely is at the apartment. The woman is actually more at the office than she is in her own apartment, because she will spend most of her free time at the gym as well… or feed the poor and I don’t know what else Brienne manages to stuff into a 24-hour-day.”

“A true saint, just without the halo,” Bronn laughs. “Which always has me wonder how she bears being around you.”

“Well, the spell may just have been broken over some yoga pants,” Jaime sighs.

“Though now I have to ask, brother, just what devil possessed you? I mean, even if it hadn’t been in front of the guys, don’t you think she would have been pissed regardless?”

“The plan was another,” Jaime argues.

“And what _was_ the plan?”

“You had a plan? You _can_ even plan?” Bronn teases.

Jaime narrows his eyes at him. “I run a business.”

“Your daddy’s business.”

“The point is… I had another plan, but that went down the toilet,” Jaime grumbles, taking a sip from the beer, only to make a disgusted face when he realizes how flat it got thanks to the constant stirring. And the hint of mint is certainly not helping the matter.

“And now you stir your beer with candy canes and spoil the mood.”

“My deepest apologies for bothering you with my beer stirring antics,” Jaime huffs.

“Well, that means this is a pretty poor excuse of a pre-Christmas. Turnout was not great anyway. I really thought that at least Daven could be convinced. He likes free drinks about as much as Bronn here,” Jaime sighs.

_So much to the good traditions and the merrier Christmases that were supposed to come!_

“He’s on a date, I heard,” Tyrion tells him, taking a sip from his drink.

“Since when?” Jaime frowns. “He prides himself being a bachelor last time I checked.”

“Remember when father made arrangements to hook him up with one of the Frey daughters because he thought it would strengthen their business alliance?”

“Yes. He said he thought better of it after the whole fallout over Robb Stark ditching his fiancée in favor of the girl from Volantis and Father undertook _any_ effort to screw them over financially,” Jaime recounts.

“Well, he seemingly got cozy with one of the Frey girls during the Christmas party at our office. So I suppose he really has better to do than hang out with us losers,” the younger man informs him.

“I’ll drink to that,” Jaime huffs, lifting his glass.

And to his own misery, though he had a nice plan in the back of his head.

“Just don’t stir it,” Bronn comments.

“Whatever.”

He really wished it were all different, because his hopes rested on having something to look forward to during Christmas time beside the gym’s party. But that ended with the worst Dirty Secret Santa ever.

_And that even though I wanted to finally change something about my Christmas routines for good. After all, Brienne keeps poking me for change even when I don’t feel like it, though she may stop that now that she decided not to talk to me anymore…_

The chime of a bell pulls Jaime out of his thoughts, over to the door where new guests are swarming in, or rather… angels and elves are swarming into the bar, giggling, laughing, squeaking as their little plastic halos bob up and down. Jaime tilts his head to the side as he watches the entourage maneuver inside, but his eyes start to widen at the last angel swarming into the bar, looking anything but pleased.

“Am I just seeing things or did just a bunch of angels enter the club?” Jaime asks. “Because I am telling you, I will murder whoever dared spike my drink to stop me from being a spoilsport then.”

“If you are seeing things, then I am seeing the same things,” Tyrion says, obviously enjoying the sight of girls in rather tight Christmas-themed dresses.

_Of course._

“So… I don’t just imagine that the tall angel is Brienne either?” Jaime asks, swallowing thickly as his eyes remain fixed on the woman at the very end of the group of women entering the bar. He can’t help but wonder who managed to force her into wearing such a costume to the occasion. By her own admission, Brienne does not like dressing up, let alone dresses in general, and she hates costumes about as much as she hates yoga, which is telling. However, there she walks, awkwardly as ever, the halo on her head bobbing up and down with every of her steps, looking perfectly out of place.

“Nope, that’s her,” Bronn confirms, though Jaime long since accepted that this is real.

She is there, he is there, and yet, they could not be further apart.

Jaime can’t tear his gaze away as he watches the group of women motion over to the bar to help themselves to some drinks. The girls are all in a very good mood, certainly aided by intoxication already, jovially singing out of tune and swinging from right to left to make their angel wings or pointed boots jiggle alongside… the bosoms.

Brienne, naturally, does not move at all that way. Instead, she tries her best to stay in the back, her long, muscular arms awkwardly hanging down on her sides because she seemingly misses the pockets on her trousers she normally wears.

The mannish woman will always stick out, even if she weren’t as tall as she is. She is one of those people who nearly always look out of place, except for the gym where Jaime first thought she was part of the inventory.

_Something I certainly shouldn’t have said only short time after we got acquainted, but… she didn’t hate me for that nearly as much as she did for that yoga outfit incident. Go figure._

“What… is this?” he can’t help but ask.

“Looks like a hen’s night to me,” Tyrion comments, rolling his shoulders. “The one dressed as sexy Santa carries a big bag reading ‘marriage,’ which is… admittedly, quite witty.”

The older brother makes a face. “Who has a hen’s night the night before Christmas?”

“You ask that as someone who celebrates pre-Christmas by getting drunk with the rest of the losers,” Tyrion points out to him.

“True again.”

“Well, why don’t you get yourself a beer to stir in and talk to Lady Knight?” Bronn suggests, straight-forward as ever.

_Lady Knight_ established itself as a nickname around the gym for when they have their little contests to compete against one another in full-contact sports like MMA, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, or kick-boxing. Brienne is the only woman at the gym, which made it a tough standing for her at first, of course. Yet, she managed to establish herself as an integral member of the group. Daven always refers to her as “one of the guys,” and Brienne seems to appreciate that.

At least she looks more in place there than she does towering above the girls handing out shots and trying really hard to remember the lyrics for some song Jaime cannot even begin to identify, only to fail miserably in the second stanza.

“… I don’t know if that’s the right moment to… approach her,” Jaime mutters, looking back at his beer, which lost all of its foam thanks to his stirring by now.

“You couldn’t reach her, now there she is and the moment doesn’t seem right to you? You really are one dense fucker,” Bronn comments, shaking his head.

“She is with those women,” Jaime argues. And he certainly doesn’t fancy making even more of a fool of himself – and Brienne for the matter – by bringing this up while she is surrounded by what he assumes to be the kind of hive of women who will tell the next best person they will see at the office or family dinner.

_And if there is one thing Brienne of Tarth doesn’t like, then it is being talked about, which makes all of this so much worse._

“Oh, Seven Hells,” Bronn grumbles, suddenly getting to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Jaime demands to know, sensing danger.

“To Pentos,” Bronn quips. “I am getting myself another drink. I will need a lot more to suffer through a night with the both of you, it appears.”

With that, he disappears into the crowd roaming around the bar, obviously enjoying the sight of some short skirts from behind as he maneuvers past the rest of the guests to get his next drink.

“I mean, he _does_ have a point,” Tyrion then says. “If you have a problem with her, now would be the time to resolve it, instead of letting it simmer for the rest of the Christmas holidays, and then until the new year… and then you eat it up for years and you turn out like Father. And then you will become a total dickhead and we will have to divorce as brothers and… And do you really want that? Because sure as hell I don’t.”

“I _won’t_ turn out like Father. I am not smart enough for that anyway,” Jaime huffs.

_I can’t even play Dirty Secret Santa right._

“So are you trying to tell me that _I_ could turn out like Father?”

“You have at least the brains for it.” Jaime shrugs.

Tyrion shudders. “Then I rather stay a little dumb thanks to what I drink and have actual Christmases with my brother and my bitchy, bitchy friend for the rest of my time.”

Jaime follows his brother’s gaze over to one of the women in elf costumes, dark hair, tan, rather short, even more so compared to Brienne, certainly a beauty.

“You want to talk to that girl, don’t you?” the older man questions, already knowing the answer, though.

“Have you seen those striped stockings? How would I _not_ want to talk to that elf and see whether she would want to live on my shelf, huh?” Tyrion chimes.

“Well?”

“I need a wingman,” Tyrion complains.

“You don’t need a wingman in how long now? Where does the sudden sense of insecurity come from?” Jaime huffs. There was a time when he took on the duty, well aware that Tyrion had his troubles getting into contact with women ever since their father screwed him over with his first girlfriend Tysha, and then again when society told him that a dwarf is an abnormal thing and thus has no right to want to do and have the things everyone else wants, too. However, Tyrion has since matured and learned how to flirt in his own quirky way. So that sense of insecurity is certainly new for Jaime to see on his brother.

_Maybe the mulled wine we had in the first pub was as bad as it tasted after all._

“It’s not so much insecurity as it is tactic. Look, we now have a very special situation. A hen’s night is just for the ladies. No hook-ups intended. After all, it’s the bride’s last night in freedom. Women in that state have a hive mentality oftentimes. They think the same, act the same, and you bet that if you make just one wrong move, each and every one will know in a matter of minutes. One has to be very careful, especially for matters of approach. One wrong move and you are under attack,” Tyrion ponders, gesticulating wildly as he downs another glass.

“I don’t think more booze will help the matter,” Jaime huffs, shaking his head.

“That hypothesis still has to be tested. And anyway, I don’t think you are really in any position to be handing out advice when you can’t bring yourself to talk to your friend. I, as a dwarf, have to find the right approach to hit on that beauty. You definitely have it easier,” the younger brother argues, gesturing at him.

“You _did_ listen to what happened between Brienne and me, yes?”

“Well, of that one thing I am sure even without testing a hypothesis: Your approach is not going to bear any positive result because no action is taken. Ergo, no result can occur other than the state staying the same,” Tyrion points out to him.

“Though one action may screw up everything,” Jaime sighs, momentarily forgetting about the flat drink, only to take another sip from it with disgust. He should get himself a new one most certainly, but then again, he doesn’t want to get anywhere near the bar which is now occupied by the hen’s hive.

Because yes, one action can destroy everything. He just saw it happen at the gym. One wrong present and a friendship can go up in flames. _Or yoga pants for that matter._

“Well, start over, then.” Tyrion shrugs.

“And how exactly?” Jaime asks, because that is the part he struggles with most, apparently.

“Oh, I would not know, though you may have to prove your skills at improvising of which I know you have a great deal,” Tyrion says, turning his head away from him.

“Why?” the older brother frowns.

“Because there she is.”

Jaime tears his gaze up as Bronn almost pushes Brienne over to the table, a fresh drink in his free hand. Her big blue eyes meet his and Jaime feels an incredible urge to crawl under the table and never get out again.

_This is ridiculous._

Normally, all should long since be done and dealt with. They should long since have talked it all out, she should have cursed him, maybe hit him real hard one time, and all would be done, all would be good again. Instead, they can’t even seem to bear to look at one another for longer than three seconds.

_Ridiculous indeed._

“Told you, he doesn’t bite, Lady Knight, soft as a kitten, that one. Now sit with us and tell us more of how you ended up as the tallest angel the city’s ever seen,” Bronn urges Brienne whose blush almost shines as brightly as the golden ring bobbing up and down on the top of her head.

“I don’t think I should…,” she argues, shaking her head, uncertainly gazing at Jaime, then the floor again.

“Do you want to return to the hive that desperately?” Bronn teases, which prompts Brienne to slip down the bench, sitting up straight as though someone ran a poker through her spine.

“That was easier than I thought,” Bronn chuckles, settling down beside her, thus successfully trapping Brienne, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by the young woman by any means.

“… I could just really use a break,” Brienne admits with a tight grimace.

“Which translates to you wanting to get the Seven Hells away from them, I assume,” Tyrion laughs. “Judging by the tone of voice already.”

Brienne sucks her lip into her mouth, drawing in a sharp breath. “… Perhaps.”

“Well, what brought you into this _precarious_ situation anyway?” Tyrion questions.

Brienne lets out a sigh as she bows her head. “I was tricked.”

“Putting on that costume didn’t give you _any_ kind of a hint?” Jaime blurts out asking, which has Brienne lift her gaze with a dangerous kind of glare. That shuts him up almost instantly.

_Yes, she is certainly still mad about the pants._

“It certainly did _not_ , because I put it on under the presumption that it was for something _entirely_ else. I was cheated, something I do not appreciate at all,” Brienne says through gritted teeth.

“Who managed to cheat you and how?” Bronn asks.

“Sansa Stark or Elf No. 2 for the night. And she said we were all going to dress up to sing for children meant to attend what I assumed to be an all open office party, a kind of charity event. She said they still needed someone for the choir, and I really thought it was just for the children, so…,” Brienne explains, rolling her hand in a circular motion.

“The little redhead took good advantage of your good will,” Bronn snorts.

“One could say so,” she sighs.

“That makes the outfit strangely fitting,” Tyrion laughs. “You know, being all charitable.”

“Oh please, I would give a lot of money just to get rid of it,” Brienne grunts. “I had no intention of walking in that thing for the past six hours.”

“Well, fire away, girl,” Bronn teases, making a gesture suggesting that she might just as well rid herself of the clothes at once.

“I won’t strip in this bar, are you insane?” Brienne scoffs.

“It won’t make you look any more ridiculous than that dress does anyway, Lady Knight.”

“ _Anyway_. There was a party, yes, just no office Christmas party. And there was not a single child in sight. And there was certainly no charity event whatsoever. Instead, I was dragged along to numerous bars by now… and a strip club… and I have seen things I want to erase from my memory forever,” Brienne mutters, a shudder running through her.

“You don’t have to be so prudish about seeing dick. That’s something to enjoy,” Bronn teases.

“It was not at all enjoyable, though,” Brienne insists.

In fact, it was terrible, very terrible, but she doesn't want to think about it, wants to stuff it far, far away, far down to where she almost managed to push that other thing that dared to crawl out of its box during the gym’s Christmas party.

“Yeah, I bet, because you want to see a particular dick and not just a random one, huh?” Bronn snorts as he takes another sip from his drink.

“What?” she gapes.

“What?” he apes her, but then goes on to say, “Point is, I think there is worse than seeing some nice junk. Even the prudish ones like you should take some joy in that.”

“The guy had more fun than we did. I still think he works there not just for free but he pays the club so he may strip,” Brienne argues, unable to hold back another shudder.

_At least Sansa enjoyed herself alright._

Everyone else was laughing, the red-haired girl foremost, but none of it was a joking matter to Brienne. She didn't even want to be there. She wanted to be at home and find a way to stuff that little box back down to where it belonged because it got far too close to the present again – coincidentally thanks to a present.

“Oh, those are bad,” Bronn laughs, leaning his head back.

“He did a pole dance. It was painted like a candy cane. He lost balance three times. It squeaked whenever he moved on it… I did not want to see that. I really did not,” Brienne says, shaking her head in the hope that the memories will fall out of it along the way, but no such luck.

Sadly, that’s apparently not how memories work. If so, she would spend much more of her time just shaking her head.

“Then why didn’t you make a run for it just yet, Lady Knight?”

“I tried, but… the hive caught me in the act,” Brienne admits feebly. For a moment, she dares to look at Jaime, but before he can so much as catch her eye, she glances back down again, feeling heat rise to her cheeks.

All of this is utterly ridiculous, she knows, but Brienne has yet to find a way, or rather a plan, to get this out of the way.

Because she misses the gym which she bypassed ever since that day. She misses the guys.

_And then there is Jaime…_

“You could smack them all in the pretty noses if you wanted,” Bronn argues.

“I do not hit people who are weaker than me. That would be a truly unworthy thing to do,” Brienne insists.

“You hit him all the time,” Bronn points out, thumbing at Jaime who glowers at him in return.

“He stands at least a chance,” Brienne argues, rolling her broad shoulders.

“Listen to that.”

“They also took my phone hostage,” the young woman goes on to say. She is normally not one to lament, but Brienne just feels drained, drained from Christmas Madness in the city and her own memories playing tricks with her to keep her from enjoying what should be a good time now that it’s passed.

_But no such luck, of course._

“How did they manage that?” Tyrion wants to know.

“Sansa collected all phones after I unsuccessfully attempted to lie about having received an emergency call from Tarth,” Brienne explains.

“That is because you are a terrible liar,” Jaime can’t help but comment.

“… I know,” she sighs. And sometimes, if only sometimes, Brienne wished she was a little better at lying, or at the very least at hiding thoughts and feelings away from the eyes of others. Because she feels like she is exposing herself far too often, far too fast.

_Or else we wouldn’t be in this situation right now, would we?_

“So, what’s the plan, then?” Jaime continues to ask.

“The first step is certainly to wait until they are properly intoxicated. They came after me one time I tried the waters and ran away. Against the odds of their impractical high-heel boots, most of them are surprisingly fast,” Brienne notes, looking over to the crowd of women dancing and drinking.

“Well, you will continue to have trouble so long you walk around dressed as an angel. It’s not tough to spot you in the streets like that. They will sniff you like hounds and drag you back to the bar for another round of cinnamon shots,” Bronn points out to her.

“… I know.”

Bronn opens his mouth to say something, only to be tapped on the shoulder by a short-haired girl with a Dornish look to her, dragging along the elf Tyrion set eyes on.

“Interested in some dance, stranger?” the Dornish girl asks, though she doesn’t wait for a reply but just drags Bronn to the dancefloor. The other woman raises an eyebrow at Tyrion.

“Will you ask me or do I have to do it myself?” she asks, crossing her thin arms over her chest with a smirk.

“If you were so kind to take me with you to the dancefloor, I would very much enjoy paying you back with a drink. A Lannister always pays his debts, you must know and…,” Tyrion means to say, but she cuts him off, “I know who you are.”

“But I don’t know who you are,” Tyrion argues with a smirk.

“Shae. And I want to dance now, so come.”

“My hypothesis was wrong after all,” the younger Lannister brother whispers before taking Shae’s hand into his own to be led away. “I suppose the two of you have some conversation due anyway, brother. And I will gladly leave you to it.”

With that, Tyrion lets himself be dragged away over to the dancefloor, which leaves Jaime and Brienne to stare at one another as though they were strangers, when that is something they are long since no more. In fact, Brienne is perhaps one of the few people who ever got to know the Jaime Lannister most others won’t even so much as take a look at. Because he makes sure to keep that guy hidden from view most of the time. However, all that familiarity seems suddenly vanished, leaving them awkwardly fiddling with their fingers, trying to gather their thoughts, their words.

And that even though they sat at just that table only a few months back to watch the game together because they were running late and didn’t want to miss it just to get home after the gym. And during that time, there was no hesitance. They talked and talked and talked until they were asked to go because the bartender wanted to close down for the night.

“… Nice outfit,” he blurts out saying at last, though Jaime feels a strong urge to hit himself for choosing those words for the opening.

“You shut up,” Brienne hisses, twisting her head away, which only results in the halo wobbling around in almost comic fashion.

“Do you think there’s any chance that the two of us can resolve that little issue surrounding the yoga…,” Jaime means to say, but Brienne cuts him off harshly before he can even finish the sentence, “Jaime, I am sitting here in a too short for my height white polyester dress with a wobbly halo on the top of my head, plotting my escape miserably. Frankly, I have other things to worry about right at that moment.”

When she looks back at him, Jaime can see how she is almost pleading him not to press the issue because, yes, Brienne seems desperate to get away from that situation, desperate enough to forget about the whole yoga pants affair.

_Well, so much to talking it out. Great hypothesis Tyrion made right there._

“Look, it’s just…,” he tries anyway, but Brienne won’t let him, “Jaime, I… I really don’t want to fight, but I just genuinely cannot focus on that right now. I have to focus on this here. I have to come up with a plan because I believe my very sanity is soon at stake if I have to have just one more cup of that bloody mulled wine the girls always put extra alcohol in. My head is spinning, that halo drives me crazy, and this is the itchiest dress I ever wore. I just want to get out of here, do you understand?”

“I think you are the only person I know who’d get that upset about having to attend a hen’s night,” Jaime snorts, shaking his head. Because he knows for a fact that Brienne actually gets along with most of the women at her working place. Sansa has a special place in her heart ever since Catelyn Stark passed away in that tragic accident alongside her son and daughter-in-law. Brienne took care of the girls as far as they permitted, helped them solve some legal issues and settle into their new home at the capital. Thus, it comes as a bit of a surprise to Jaime that Brienne can’t seem to have at least a bit of fun with the women she likes at least well enough to meet up with outside the job, too.

“I am wearing an ill-fitting angel costume that is itching in place I did not even imagine could be itching and those women drag me to places I did never, not in a lifetime, wish to visit. I think that is enough to wish to get away.”

“There’s worse than a strip bar.”

“There is not much worse than visiting a _bad_ strip bar.”

He tilts his head to the side. “Point taken.”

“I just have to figure out a way to sneak away, that is all.”

Brienne needs a plan, it’s just that simple. No more improvising, no more trying to seize the moment, just a solid plan, well-thought out and properly executed. Because Brienne just wants to be at home, wants to get away from all this, Jaime Lannister included because whenever she looks at him, she has to think back to the Christmas party, and that just brings that damned box back up again.

_I just need a break._

“Can’t you just call a cab and make a run for it, pretending that you have some trouble at home?” Jaime suggests.

“I told you, they got my phone.”

“Ah, right, almost forgot. But how did that bunch of short, frail girls manage to wrestle the phone from you anyway?” Jaime wants to know.

“They didn’t _wrestle_ it from me. I was using the bathroom, told someone to take my stuff, and when I came back, they had officially _confiscated_ my phone so that I would finally ‘have some fun with the girls.’ And anyway, do you expect me to roughen them up over a phone?”

“You would have backhanded me over that the minute I took it,” Jaime snorts.

“Because you can defend yourself – they can’t. That would be a very dishonorable thing to do,” Brienne argues.

“I am a cripple.”

“You are a man with just one hand who can throw a mean hook even with his left now, well versed in close combat. You know how to defend yourself,” she corrects him.

He smirks. “You forgot handsome.”

“ _Whatever_. Anyway, that is the tale of how my phone was taken away from me and since lying didn’t get me far, I assume I am to be damned to spend the rest of the night chasing after a flock of… chicks… elves… angels… whatever.”

“You truly are a saint, Brienne, or angel for that matter.”

The younger woman just glowers at him, which has Jaime instinctively duck his head. After all, he is in no position to be making jokes at her expenses, considering what he actually would want to achieve with a proper apology for the yoga pant incident.

“… No offense. It’s just…,” he adds quickly, but Brienne cuts him off, “The outfit, I know.”

Or rather, the travesty of it.

Because that is perhaps the worst of it all, beside all the troubles she currently has running circles around her: to run around looking that ridiculous. Brienne knows for a fact that she is as ugly as a mare, but like this, she gets even more unwanted attention than she gets for matters of her height already.

_Sometimes I truly wished I could just disappear._

“Brienne?” Jaime then asks, pulling the young woman back to him looking at her. She wets her lips before saying, “Yes?”

“Do you want to get into my pants?”

“Your _what_?!” she gapes.

Jaime’s eyes widen as he mulls that over inside his head. “… That came out the wrong way.”

“Most certainly,” Brienne agrees, making a face, all the while fighting a blush.

_So very ridiculous indeed. All of it._

“What I tried to say… is that I went running right after work and didn’t make it home before joining the pre-Christmas celebration. So I have my bag right here under the table… in case you want to get changed,” Jaime explains, letting out a shuddered breath towards the end, hoping that he somehow saved the situation just now. Because he can’t afford this getting any worse than it is anyway.

Brienne stares at him with wide eyes. “You mean that.”

“Yes. Why else would I say it, if awkwardly, I admit?”

“Which means I could get out of here. Possibly,” Brienne ponders.

“Yes.”

“I would be free again.”

He snorts at that. “Now you are being dramatic.”

“You wouldn’t say that after what I had to see,” Brienne insists.

“Anyway, you can just go to the lady’s bathroom and get changed, emerge with my hoodie covering your head, and they won’t realize you sneaking out until you are well out the door. I’d suggest I’ll escort you to call a cab outside and then you will be in the comfort of your home and far away from bad strippers,” Jaime suggests, hoping that this will make him be a bit more in her favor again so he may approach the apology part again.

“I don’t need a cab. I just have to get out of the bar and after that I am walking home. Cabs grab attention. Plates can be tracked down.”

“You think they’d go that far only just to get you back?”

“They tried to hook me up with someone – at that strip bar…,” Brienne informs him.

Jaime’s frown deepens and for reasons beyond his knowledge, there is suddenly a tightness in his stomach that wasn’t there before.

“He was not the stripper, though, I hope?” he asks, making a face.

“ _No_ , but… I don’t want to go looking for a guy while he watches moderately dressed women flip around on a pole.”

“Yeah, not the best first date,” he agrees.

“Not really, no,” Brienne sighs.

“Did he look nice at least?”

“Redheads are… not my type,” Brienne says curtly.

_Even less so after that box ever came into existence…_

“Well, be it as it may, I think you should seize the moment,” Jaime sighs. “They are busy dancing, if you can call those moves dancing…”

“I… thank you,” Brienne says awkwardly, unable to meet his gaze this time.

“It’s nothing. What a person would I be if I didn’t save a young woman from evil, bad strippers riding the candy cane?” Jaime jokes.

“He had a mustache.”

“Pornstache is what you call it in this case.”

Brienne shakes herself as she reaches under the table to grab Jaime’s bag. “I am getting changed now.”

Jaime chuckles to himself as he watches her fight her way up from the bench not really wide enough to fit her tall frame. There is always something awkward to Brienne’s movements, but he learned to appreciate that, in fact. Because after his hand injury, he felt like the clumsiest person on earth.

But Brienne never seemed to mind, because she was not much different from him in that regard. It was something that connected them without either one’s realization before they even learned to tolerate one another.

He is surprised when Brienne comes back almost immediately, still with white polyester dress and wobbly halo, looking as distressed as ever.

“Need help with getting changed?” he blurts out asking.

“What?”

“What?”

“They have taken a hold of the lady’s bathroom,” Brienne then says, letting her head hang low, which brings the halo to bob again.

“Taken a hold of it,” Jaime repeats.

“One girl just got a message that her boyfriend cheated on her, so now she broke up with him. She is crying while sitting on the toilet while the others try to berate her,” Brienne explains.

“I bet it was true love.”

“I don’t find that as much of a joking matter as it is quite… troublesome for the plan you proposed,” Brienne argues. “I can’t just change here.”

Not to mention that walking in there, hearing the woman cry only brought up the box again, and Brienne wants nothing but destroy it, throw it away, but it keeps coming back to her.

_Just when does this end?_

“You could crawl under the table,” Jaime suggests jokingly.

“And what would _that_ look like, you remind me?” she snorts, gesturing at him.

“… True again, I withdraw that last suggestion.”

“Much appreciated.” Brienne furrows her eyebrows when Jaime suddenly gets to his feet. “What’s the matter now?”

“Since I withdrew my earlier suggestion, I now ask you to follow this one. Come now,” he urges her, not just trying to seize the moment but her as well.

After all, he is supposed to be good at improvising.

“Wait, perhaps you should let me hear it first,” Brienne insists, but Jaime won’t stop now that he put his mind to it, for better or worse, “Come now and don’t be stubborn about it, wench.”

“I always am,” she retorts. “And don’t call me wench.”

Jaime and his love for medieval insults will forever remain a mystery to her, though she reckons that is what happens when a guy with a fable for medieval weaponry gets to pick any other subject beside business administration for his education. It was almost guaranteed that he would go for medieval history.

“I know, but for once… trust me, okay?” Jaime then says with a tight grimace, well aware of the implication that word comes with. After all, trust means a great deal to Brienne, he knows that.

Brienne blinks at him, perfectly stunned, but then lets Jaime pull her along, past the dancefloor, past the people roaming around the bar, all the way to the bathrooms on the other side. She doesn’t even know why she doesn't fight back right at that moment, after all, she probably should, but that is the thing with Jaime: He just has something about him that makes her do things even when she doesn’t want to

And it is yet to be determined whether it’s for good or bad.

“Did you listen to a word I just said? The bathroom is not an option!” Brienne snaps when she sees the signs.

“I well heard you,” Jaime huffs.

Brienne’s eyes open wide when he simply drags her into the _men’s_ bathroom without further prelude or explanation. When the door falls close behind them, Brienne finds the eyes of a couple of men standing by the urinals right on them and she feels any urge to make a run back out the door.

_He can’t be serious, can he?_

Jaime seems unfazed, though, as he just tightens his grip on her arm and guides her to one of the stalls. Only when one of the men starts to whistle while the other comments, “I hope you got a condom with you, boy,” does Jaime bother to look back at them with a dark glare that has the guy instantly shut his mouth.

He pushes Brienne inside the stall and locks before turning to her with a shit-eating grin, which leaves his face fast as she slaps him right across it.

“Ow, what was that for?!” he laments, rubbing his cheek.

“You could not have given me a fair warning?!” Brienne retorts.

“You would have said no had I asked.”

“Precisely. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to ask at all!” Brienne snaps.

“Well, we are here now, so… off the clothes go.”

From outside, there is another whistle.

“Get out, you massive creep, that show’s not meant for you!” Jaime shouts, but then looks back at Brienne. “We are here now, so let’s just go through with the plan.”

“That’s not how you get laid, mate!” another voice calls.

“And now one’s asked you, _mate_!” Jaime hollers back.

Maybe this was not his brightest idea after all.

“To Hells with it!” Brienne says at last. While she does not appreciate the circumstances at all, she knows that they won’t get any better from a lack of action on her behalf. So she might just as well get over with it.

Jaime is quite flabbergasted when Brienne pulls the polyester dress over her head, not much caring when the wobbly halo tumbles to the ground alongside the cheap fabric, leaving her in far less clothing than she would normally have Jaime see.

_Or anyone else for the matter._

When Brienne whirls up again, realization seems to dawn on her as red color almost jumps to her freckled cheeks.

“Uhm, sorry,” Jaime mutters, avoiding his gaze instantly, though he can’t help but keep his eyes on one thing in particular: “… You are… you are wearing the yoga leggings?”

“We were supposed to be out in the cold for long, as I thought we’d sing for little kids and not get to move around much. Those are good quality that keeps you warm, as by your own note, remember? So I thought… no one would notice if I wore them underneath anyway,” Brienne explains, her blush only ever intensifying.

“Well, I do now,” Jaime says.

“And that was not at all planned, you might be able to imagine.”

He nods his head. “Right.”

“Anyway, they were light in color so they wouldn’t be visible under the dress, that’s all,” Brienne explains.

Jaime watches as she gathers the loose pants and the hoodie to use as a quick and hopefully halfway effective disguise, swallowing thickly as his eyes fall on the toned stomach peeking through the shirt that rolled up when Brienne wrestled with the polyester dress.

In fact, he has seen her in less clothing than that, and yet, Jaime can feel a rumble in low his stomach where he would _not_ want it to be, even less so after it became painfully clear that Brienne is not up to peace negotiations.

The last thing currently needed is anything to add to the awkwardness he cannot seem to shake off anyway, no matter his otherwise suave nature. Jaime knows how to sweet-talk in the business, but outside it, with Brienne, those rules just don’t apply, even less so than they did a few weeks back. With Brienne, there is just one language – and it is honesty. The woman hates being lied to, which had Jaime believe for quite some time that they could never possibly be friends. After all, Lannisters are not particularly known for their great candidness and bona fides.

_Quite on the contrary._

However, the longer they kept fighting the more truth Jaime found himself speaking with her. It was the language she spoke, and while that didn’t speak him free of getting judgmental glances time and time again, Brienne always seemed to show more understanding for his actions, past choices and opinions if he was square about them. However, now that this little mishap spoiled this truce, Jaime doesn’t even know where to begin to tell the truth.

_Or what the truth even is._

Because that is the other thing on Jaime’s mind – just _why_ is all of this such a big deal? He understands that Brienne is upset and doesn’t want to talk to him, but why does _that_ circumstance reduce him to a picture of misery, stirring beer with a candy cane, talking gibberish, being even more of a Christmas downer than he is by nature? Jaime recovered from an amputation. He suffered through an entitled yet very shitty childhood. But _this_? This is supposed to be the thing that makes him act like a complete fool? This is supposed to break him?

Brienne isn’t his girlfriend, they are not together, they train at the gym, they are friends, better friends than most people would assume, granted as much as they fight.

So truly, what is the big deal over some yoga pants with Christmas patterns that cannot be fixed and has him babble like an idiotic teenager talking to his crush?

“Alright, done,” Brienne announces, pulling Jaime back to the reality of him standing in the corner of the stall whereas Brienne occupies the one furthest away, stuffing the polyester dress alongside the wobbly ring meant to represent a halo into his sports bag. Now in hoodie and wide trousers, she looks much more like the person he knows from the gym, and Jaime feels a great deal of relief at that. It gives him a sense of normalcy, something to hold on to.

This is his Brienne again.

“Will you burn the thing?” he asks.

“That’s bad for the environment.”

“I would burn it. And you know I have my issues with fire ever since Aerys,” Jaime points out to her.

“I can donate it to charity,” she ponders.

“But it has seen so much, and sat on couches where…,” he argues, but she cuts him off, making a face of disgust, “Just don’t.”

“Just saying, that dress was places.”

“It was, and now it is time that it goes to the place I call home,” Brienne announces.

“Right, well, don’t forget the hood. Or else the disguise won’t do the job.”

Brienne nods her head as her fingers curl around the soft fabric and she pulls the hood over her electrostatic, unruly hair, which stands up in more directions than she can begin to smooth over.

“Are you ready?” Jaime asks.

“Just get on with it and get inside her already, lad!”

“No one’s talking to you, asshole!” Jaime shouts.

“Let’s just get out of here,” Brienne mutters before exiting the stall, stuffing her hands in the hoodie’s muff as deep as she can, Jaime’s bag squarely hanging from her broad shoulders. From behind, one can surely mistake her for a man, Jaime reckons, though by now, he can very well tell apart the many ways in which Brienne looks nothing like a guy.

That wasn’t always so, of course. In fact, he, too, mistook her for a guy first chance they met, which was _surely_ not the best start of a relationship of any sort. Brienne wouldn’t talk to him for another week at the gym, no matter how much he tried to tease her into action. Things changed gradually, grew constantly. He kept bugging her and apparently, over time, Brienne learned to find some merit in it, whatever it may be. Because, to be frank, Jaime has yet to figure out how someone like Brienne stays friends with someone like him for almost two years now.

_Though the yoga pants may have broken the spell._

Now that he trained for such a long time with her, Jaime can tell all of her moves and knows them to be distinctively Brienne. She may move awkwardly most of her time but her hips still have a certain swing to them when she makes those long, long strides, forgets her own clumsiness and claims space rather than trying to take up as little as possible. While she is not curvy by any means, he saw her in tighter sports clothes a couple of times, which is why Jaime knows for a fact that there is a nice if small dip by her thick hip, and from all that he could see – and on a few occasions during wrestling sessions feel – Brienne _does_ have a nice toned arse.

_Nothing to sneeze at, really._

Though what Jaime remembers most changing his perception of her from something hard as a rock with nothing but sharp edges and a wall around it as high as a skyscraper were the small touches she granted, a squeeze of the shoulder here, a light pat on the back alongside a murmur of encouraging words. When Jaime picked up close combat again for the first time after his amputation, he felt perfectly at a loss. All of his instincts were wrong. He couldn’t move right. And he was close, very close to giving up, leaving the gym and never coming back. But Brienne didn’t let him. With her stubborn nature, she succeeded in what he failed to do before – she made him realize again that you can do a lot of things if you put your mind to it, if you train hard and don’t yield to circumstance.

Brienne may be mannish in looks, may seem like this stony wall with sharp edges no one can get past, but there is a way, and once you climb it, there is something warm and comforting, something good and true.

A treasure lying in an old, wooden chest.

“Well, that was a short ride on the candy cane, then, I’d assume, if you still had time to change, girl,” the same guy they saw standing at the urinal when they entered says with a dirty grin tugging at his lips.

“If you take that long for a piss, I’d suggest to you to seek out a doctor. Maybe your pecker is…,” Jaime tilts his head slightly to the side, “… not only very small but also infected.”

“Oh fuck off!” the man growls.

“We were just about to. Merry Christmas,” Jaime says with a faux smile. With that, the two exit the bathroom, surprised to see that almost the entire pub seems to have gathered by the dancefloor in the meantime.

“What’s going on here?” Jaime blurts out asking when he sees his otherwise quiet bar in quite an uproar as the people keep chanting and gathering around the small dancefloor.

“… I think it has to do with your brother, actually,” Brienne says.

“What? Why?”

“He is… dancing.”

“Ugh, people have to stop giving him a stare. He is a dwarf, alright, but that doesn’t mean they get to make fun of him for doing what everyone else does,” Jaime laments.

“He is dancing without a shirt… giving Shae what seems to be a… lap dance,” Brienne says, craning her neck a bit to get an unobstructed view, which is certainly easier for her, as tall as she stands.

“Alright, well, that means he does not get pity from me. But we may seize the moment to get away, hm?” Jaime reminds her.

“Yes, most definitely,” Brienne agrees, only to dip under when one of the elves comes just their direction. Jaime has to hold back a chuckle as Brienne whirls around to stand with her back against his, careful to pull the hood even more over her face.

“Sansa Stark!” he greets when the red-haired girl approaches.

“Oh, Mr. Lannister, good to see you,” the young woman greets him, offering a gentle smile.

“Nice costume. Very _festive_ ,” Jaime compliments her.

“Well, if one of the friends has a Christmas wedding, it just seems to be appropriate for a costume for the hen’s night,” Sansa chuckles, toying around with the hem of her dress. “I’d assume you are here with your brother?”

“I was, though I consider leaving him to his own… _fun_.”

“Might be for the best. I think Shae is _really_ into him.”

“Is she?” Jaime asks, liking the sound of that – because Tyrion has been over at the brothels far too often in his opinion, instead of actually looking for a relationship he doesn't have to pay money for.

“Shae likes guys with a personality, she says, though I wouldn’t know what her type is,” Sansa ponders, only to quickly switch the subject, “In any case, you and Brienne are befriended, right?”

Jaime frowns at her. “I would say so, yes.”

He tries his best not to side-eye Brienne to give her away, but that doesn’t make the urge seize to ask her whether they are still friends or he destroyed everything with Winter Yoga and the pants to go along with it.

“Well, have you seen her by any chance? I know we entered the bar together, but somehow she got lost again while we were getting a new round of drinks. She should be hard to miss as she wears a festive outfit as well,” Sansa says. “As an angel. I found it looked rather nice on her, with the blonde hair and all.”

“Can’t say that I’ve spotted any tall angels just yet, no,” Jaime lies swiftly.

“Well, if you do, please let me know. She is missing out on all the fun,” Sansa sighs. “Even though that was the point of taking her along in the first place.”

“I am… not entirely sure whether I am one of the people she currently wants to talk to,” Jaime says with a tight grimace.

“As far as I gathered, no, but I don’t want to let her off the hook that easily.”

“Why so?” he questions.

“She’s been such a downer for the past few weeks but wouldn’t say what it was all about. As far as I know this has to do with you,” Sansa explains.

He shrugs. “I fear so.”

“Well, I wanted to cheer her up again. Brienne didn’t go out in ages, so I reckoned that maybe that was wearing her down as well. But I fear that she is not nearly enjoying herself as much as we do… or as much as I thought she would,” Sansa explains, biting on her lower lip pensively. “You know, she’s done such a great deal for our family that I thought it would be nice to at least try to cheer her up again, but it doesn’t seem to be to her liking.”

“She… is a unique character.”

“She is, she is. Well, I hope you two can resolve the issue. I would not want her to have such a terrible Christmas. Let her know that I will keep her phone hostage until she comes to talk to me.”

“I will let her know,” Jaime assures her.

“Alright, then I will check on one of the girls who should still be in the lady’s bathroom,” Sansa sighs.

“Break-ups are always nasty,” Jaime says sympathetically, only to almost bite his tongue when Brienne elbows him in the side slightly.

“How do you know that she just had a break-up?” Sansa asks.

“Oh, uhm, that was just… I made an educated guess, is all. Why else would someone hide in a lady’s bathroom if not for matters of the heart?”

Sansa eyes him for a longer moment, but then lets it slide, for all it seems. “Well, in case we don’t see one another again, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year already, Mr. Lannister.”

“The same to you, Sansa,” Jaime says, offering a smile.

She nods her head before diving back into the crowd.

“Can we go?” he asks Brienne, though the woman won’t answer. Jaime doesn’t take any more chances and instead grabs her elbow to guide her through the crowd and out the door.

Cold air smacks against his, and for a moment, Jaime feels as though his entire face was numb. He shakes himself as he buttons up his winter coat, watching with irritation as Brienne nervously paces in front of him.

“What’s the matter now? Needed to pee before we went?” Jaime asks, though his voice is veiled with concern because that behavior comes very unexpected.

“I am a terrible person,” Brienne then says, clutching at her head as she keeps walking circles a bit further down the road, out of view from the bar.

“What now?” Jaime asks walking after her.

“Sansa,” she says, gesturing back at the bar.

“She didn’t seem distressed to me,” Jaime argues, making a face.

“She was trying to be nice to me by taking me along, wanted to cheer me up again, you heard it! And I am acting like some witless fool trying to sneak away. This is…,” Brienne curses, futilely attempting to shake those thoughts out of her head again.

Because this should tell her that it’s not even the situation that is being entirely ridiculous, it is, as per usual, her. Because Brienne lets that box from the past have the better of her in the present, and now she is disappointing people she actually dares to consider friends.

“You can still go back inside if you want,” Jaime suggests.

“No!” Brienne cries out, louder than she intended.

“That’s what I thought. Brienne, it’s alright to leave. You didn’t have trouble with that before, so why now? Just because it’s Sansa?” Jaime questions.

“You know that I care about her a lot,” she sighs, bowing her head.

“Yes, that doesn’t mean you have to go with her plans, though. She seemed pretty accepting of the circumstance that this was not to your liking in my opinion.”

“I am still a terrible person for it,” Brienne insists.

“What am I if you are already terrible, then?” Jaime questions.

Brienne looks at him for a long moment, surprised by that statement, which is why Jaime goes on to say, “… I am just saying, I think there are far more terrible people out there than you are. In fact, you may be one of the few people who get to wear the angel outfit in good conscience, Brienne.”

“Ugh, stop that nonsense. I am not a saint, or angel for the matter. Not at all. Absolutely not,” Brienne insists.

No, she is much more terrible than she would like to think. Because all of this should not be an issue. She should not have an issue hanging out with the girls for the hen’s night, and she should long since moved past that whole nonsense with Jaime and the yoga pants.

But she just doesn’t find the words.

She just has no plan out of that maze.

And Brienne hates it, hates it, hates it.

Jaime shakes his head when Brienne starts to walk down the street, away from the bar. The sudden change in her demeanor has him more upset than he would have thought, but now agitation and irritation changed to straight-up sadness.

“Brienne, now wait,” he calls after her.

The tall woman turns back on her heels, her big blue eyes piercing through the darkness of the hood.

_She does have astonishing eyes._

“Oh, I am… I am so sorry. I totally forgot… I will just walk home. You can go back inside and celebrate your pre-Christmas with your brother. I know this means a great deal to you – and I kept you away from it for long enough already,” Brienne assures him, feeling doubly bad for destroying what she knows is a troublesome time for him anyway.

_What a great friend you are, Brienne_ , she curses herself.

“What, _no_ , once the little party lion is out, he is no longer fun to play with,” the older man argues.

“Jaime, if this is yet again one of your follies of insisting to walk me home to protect me, I have to repeat it to you that I don’t need that, at all. If it’s alright with you, I would return the clothes next time we see one another at the gym. Oh, and the bag…,” Brienne says, already walking up to him to hand it over, but Jaime holds up his hands, or rather his hand and his stump, to signal her to stop.

“I am walking you home.”

“Jaime.”

“I… would really like to walk you home, okay? Can we just… it’s pre-Christmas and I just saved you, so why not let me have my way for once? Even though I am still on all the naughty lists?” he grumbles.

“… Fine.”

Jaime lets a silent sigh of relief when Brienne loads the bag back on her shoulder and starts to walk again. He is quick to catch up.

“You know, a gentleman would carry the bag now,” Jaime comments.

“And I as a gentlewoman gladly volunteer for the task,” she snorts.

Jaime shakes his head with amusement. Brienne is actually much more traditional than her out of the ordinary nature would let on. He knows from the shared conversations they had, sitting all sweaty on benches over at the gym, that Brienne actually holds the old values of chivalry in high regards.

“I try not to be a romantic lunatic about it, really. And it’s not like I think only the men ought to be chivalrous, but sometimes I just think that the world would be much a better place if we all learned to be a bit more caring of the other without expecting something in return, held the door open even not for the prettiest girl, or showed some kindness to a stranger even though he does not wear the finest clothes,” was what she told him, and that somehow impressed Jaime.

Because isn’t there a great deal of truth in that? Jaime is accustomed to faking kindness, he is used to utilizing it, but that is not chivalry, it’s not living up of the ideals knights once pursued, if they ever did. However, Brienne of Tarth longs for a kind of notion that would indeed make a much better place of the desolation this fast-moving, fast-changing, fast-living world can present.

A bit more chivalry, a bit more kindness, it may not save the world, but it may very well make it just a bit better.

“Brienne?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think it’s possible that the _gentlewoman_ you are can bring herself to talk to me about what happened during the Christmas party at the gym?” he asks, because Jaime knows he has to use that one chance he just got.

Because he just can’t bear to be at odds with her.

“… I was afraid you’d ask that,” Brienne sighs, letting her head hang low.

“Look, I am really sorry for what happened. I misunderstood the rules of the game… or rather, didn’t read carefully enough. I never played that kind of game because we Lannisters… are not nearly as socially capable as it may seem.”

“I know that first hand,” she snorts.

For all his smooth talk, Jaime is actually rather odd, she had to learn. Because, as it turns out, he didn’t really have as many good friends as someone would assume. He only ever cared about and for the family, that was the center of his entire life, as far as he told her. And in a way, Brienne found a strange kind of comfort in the thought that even someone like Jaime could be as odd as she takes herself to be.

“The point is, I understood that the gifts would simply be exchanged and one would have a private laugh at it. I didn’t know we would gather in a circle and make a grandeur show of it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have packed that in. I know you don’t like that kind of attention, I just… I didn’t know. And I am sorry. I didn’t want you to be on the receiving end of that joke. I just… wanted to make a joke, you know.”

“I know you didn’t mean for it. And there isn’t even a reason to apologize beyond being stupid enough not to think about whether someone could see that oh so private gift,” Brienne says mildly.

“Point taken,” Jaime snorts, though he is still surprised that Brienne hits such a tone. He actually expected her to be cursing him already.

“I didn’t mean to give you a hard time about it, which makes this ever the worse,” Brienne complains, running her left hand over her freckled face.

_If not for that damned box, all would be fine._

Jaime looks at her in utter bewilderment. “What’s that supposed to mean? Aren’t you mad at me?”

“A bit, but I am not mad at you for doing what the game was about. It’s just… it’s as I said, I am being a terrible person,” Brienne admits feebly.

“How so?” Jaime asks, though she wished he didn’t.

“Because I am giving you a hard time even though you are undeserving of it. I just didn’t… I just wanted to bury it,” Brienne explains.

“Which is much unlike you. At least when it comes to me. You make me admit all my dirty little secrets,” Jaime snorts.

Though most of the time, he doesn’t even know how she does it. With Brienne, he feels like he can talk about anything. She listens, says her opinion, but will first of all listen, now that she knows that with him, you have to dig deeper than the surface.

So maybe that is the reason why.

“I don’t force you into sharing them. And some I would much rather have you keep secret,” Brienne argues.

“Oh, you mean about that one time in Dorne when I ended up with my…,” he means to say with a grin, but Brienne cuts him off with a wave of her hand, “Yes, that, for example. But anyway. I just… I couldn’t face you, really, because I knew that you would want to know just why I ran off like that and reacted so extremely over the matter. So yes, a terrible person much.”

“You are _not_ a terrible person, Brienne. Otherwise that would make me the devil himself.”

“You are far from being the devil, Jaime,” Brienne insists.

She values him in ways she doesn't even understand herself at times, but Brienne truly appreciates their friendship, that he lets her that close. She never quite had that with a guy before, even when she had actual dates – after that certain box was opened for the first time – it never felt as close as it does with Jaime. He trusts her, it’s just that easy, even though a lot of people find that exceedingly difficult.

“Right, well, that would actually be my father,” Jaime laughs.

“Perhaps.”

“Or Roose Bolton.”

“That guy makes me shudder.”

“Or his son.”

Brienne cringes for emphasis.

“So yeah, _those_ are terrible people? You? You can’t be that terrible by comparison, can you?”

“But I _feel_ terrible,” Brienne insists. She feels a heavy weight on her chest ever since she got out of the gym. She felt like throwing up most of the time ever since she went back to work and tried to distract herself, only to return to memories of how easy it was with Jaime before all that happened, which all crumpled away thanks to the fear of losing that kind of normalcy she found with this very odd guy.

“Well, you won’t stop feeling terrible unless you resolve the problem, or so I was told by a certain gentlewoman some time ago,” Jaime points out to her.

And as much as he hated her for saying it to him over and over, Jaime had to learn that this certain gentlewoman was very, very right. He was so used to eating it all up, all of the frustration, the anger, the sadness over the loss of his hand, but she didn’t let him off the hook, not in the arena and not in conversation.

And somehow, it made a bit easier, even if it took some time to get there.

“You are using my words against me?” she scoffs.

He laughs easily, stuffing his hand and stump deeper into the pockets of his coat. “If it works, why not?”

Brienne sucks her lower lip into her mouth, contemplating. Jaime is always rather amused watching her think. She has a very peculiar way about herself, not just for matters of looks or walk, but also in the way her entire body always seems to move along with the motions of her thoughts.

“… It just brought back some really bad teenage memories I buried deep, deep down and… I know I overreacted, but I couldn’t help myself,” Brienne admits at last. “And then I felt so embarrassed for it that I made a scene at the gym that I didn’t really know how to face the guys, let alone you. So I rather stayed away and tried to come up with a plan.”

“There aren’t plans for everything,” Jaime comments, though that doesn’t do much to erase that unpleasant feeling of having cuased Brienne harm when that is the furthest thing from his mind, at least it grew to be. In the beginning, he quite liked driving her mad, have her stomp her feet and stalk away with gritted teeth, but now? Now he can hardly bear it when Brienne shows him the cold shoulder for five minutes or less.

“But it’s nice if you have a plan,” Brienne sighs.

To her, they are one of the few ways to move forward when her foolish heart tells her to stop and walk circles instead. A plan means direction, out of this mess, and that was the approach she always took, in particular with the situation that is the cause of this whole mess just now. She walked away from it, didn’t look back and instead thought about her career, her future, becoming an adult and leaving her teenage self behind for good.

Though that girl keeps coming back even though no one wants her around – and shouldn’t she have learned the lesson by now? Because no one wanted her around before, so what does she think changed in the here and now?

“… What bad kind of teenage memories involve some tight yoga pants, though? Just wondering,” Jaime asks quietly, barely moving his lips apart as he speaks.

Brienne leans her head back, puffing out air which turns to white clouds around her mouth. She knew that follow-up question would come, though she really wished it did not. She wants to toss this damned memory away already, but no, the girl keeps playing the same sad tunes she used to listen to in her room back at Evenfall Hall, trying to distract herself from big tears and ugly crying even though she should have known better.

“I think I told you… just as I think it is fairly obvious by just looking at me…,” Brienne says, gesturing at her face, “… that I wasn’t particularly popular during my high school times… and middle school… pre-school… kindergarten… oh, and of course college and the working place?”

“Yes, because people are terrible like that,” Jaime snorts.

And sadly, he was one of them in the beginning, but then again, he is accustomed to seeing the bad in people. To run into someone truly good stirred up his world about as much as he stirred that beer back in the bar, though that kind of stirring actually made things better.

“Well, someone played a prank on me that involved an almost uncannily similar package to the one you gave me and some… clothes inside. It wasn’t even yoga clothes, but… I was publicly humiliated and… I didn’t want to revisit that memory, so I will admit I made a run from it,” Brienne says.

“Well, shit.”

“As I said, it’s not your fault, not at all. It was just…,” Brienne means to say, but Jaime interrupts with a knowing smile, “Bad memories. I know that song very, very well. It’s nothing you can help having, really.”

“Still,” Brienne sighs, hunching her shoulders. Because it is such behavior that threatens her present, which was not at all that bad, was actually really, really good. Brienne doesn’t want to be at odds with Jaime, not anymore, even less so because it is due to something she wants as far gone as possible.

But it just keeps on coming back, all of it, always the same teenage girl who may have known how to defend herself with physical strength, but who always remained vulnerable to the words of others, no matter her insistence to the contrary.

“Do you think I was a terrible person for having those moments after I lost my hand?” Jaime then questions, which catches Brienne off-guard.

“No,” she answers promptly. “Most certainly not.”

“Then what’s different for you?” he wants to know.

“Because yours is _actual_ trouble whereas I returned to my status as an insecure high school girl. I am a grown-up woman now. I should be over all this nonsense,” Brienne explains.

Because that is the other thing that made her stay away from the gym ever since it happened. Here she was, unable to even pick up the phone or answer Jaime’s texts just because of something that happened during her high school years. Jaime suffered through having his hand amputated. That is most certainly reason enough to only see the bad in the world and have those moments where the past gets the better of you. But this is just teenage drama, teenage memories.

And yet, the box keeps coming up.

“My brother never moved past how shittily the family’s been treating him. Cersei never moved past the fact that she was not daddy’s favorite and always blamed it on her being born a girl. I never moved past that I lost my hand. I guess you get to not move past something as well without ending up on the naughty list,” Jaime argues.

A faint smile tugs at her lips. “I would like to think that.”

“You are a good person, Brienne, in fact, the best person I know. And I have met many people already. You are kind and polite and you give a damn on chivalry when no one else even bothers anymore, so if you are not a good person, then I doubt that one ever existed,” Jaime assures her, but then ends up adding, “And you are a stubborn mule, too, which some people will also find charming in its very own way.”

He bites the inside of his cheek. Old habits die hard, but at least it makes this odd feeling in his stomach go away, going back on the old tracks of banter and tease.

“Whatever.” Brienne shakes her head.

He shrugs. “I find it charming.”

“You like mules? Since when?”

“I don’t dislike them.”

“Ah.”

“Anyway, I suppose we would both do best not trying to drown ourselves in the sorrow of either having made such a poor gifting choice or letting the past creep back into the present, wouldn’t you agree?” Jaime debates, sincerely hoping that Brienne will agree with him.

Being at odds with her is apparently the worst that happened to him as of late, and that comes from a man who literally lost a hand already.

Quite strange, quite strange, but nonetheless true.

“I suppose I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Brienne questions.

“Sometimes we don’t get to choose, no,” Jaime chuckles softly.

_We don’t get to choose who we…_

“I am sorry I made you feel like you were at fault for what was clearly the wrongs of past relations I had in my life long before I met you,” Brienne says.

“And I am sorry for the shitty gift choice – and the lack of attention to the rules.”

“Rules are important.”

“As you keep reminding me.”

A small smile flashes across her lips and Jaime finds his mouth curling as well, because Brienne happy… makes him happy as well, as it turns out. It’s strange how one’s own happiness can be so dependent on the welfare of another person – and that even though they are not family by any means.

It’s as he told Sansa in the pub – Brienne is a unique character, absolutely singular.

“So… we are good again?” he asks tentatively.

“We are good if you say we are,” Brienne confirms. “As I said, I overreacted.”

“Always so forgiving, Brienne of Tarth. You truly are deserving of that wobbly halo.”

“Don’t remind me of that thing,” she huffs, rolling her big blue eyes at him. “I will have to explain it all to Sansa once I get my phone back anyway.”

“Brienne, for the love of the Gods, you can now stop blaming yourself for the world being shitty even to someone as honorable as you. No harm was done with you leaving them to their fun, rest assured,” Jaime says. “Anyway, we need a new topic because that nonsense drives me crazy. So, now that we are friends again, what are your plans for the season? We didn’t get to talk about it during the Christmas party and after that you went into hiding.”

Because, if Jaime is being _perfectly_ honest with himself, a part of him would like it very much if Brienne were around some time before New Year’s Eve. Because there is an actual gift, one selected with care, and perhaps that would be a nice thing to do on one of the holidays instead of spending his days trying to bypass having eggnog handed to him at the Lannister Residence.

_And maybe, just maybe we could go out for dinner and…_

“I am sorry.”

“I don’t want you to keep apologizing, Brienne. I was just teasing. So. What are your plans? Because I know you have not just one but… five. And a backup plan for each, just in case. Will you be travelling to Tarth like last year?” he asks, hoping to slip back into the familiar, back into banter and joking, because that is where he feels confident and less like a teenager stammering the words.

Jaime’s lips curl into a frown at the thought of last year’s Christmas season. Because that made his Christmas more miserable than he would want _anyone_ to know. The young man had simply assumed Brienne would be around town, which is why he thought it was fine withholding the Christmas gift until after the holy days meant to be spent with the family are over. It would have been their first Christmas season together since they became friends, and Jaime already fancied the idea of not only having a pre-Christmas with his brother but also a post-Christmas with Brienne. Inside his head, that all seemed like a sound plan, until it met the reality that Brienne had already booked the tickets to Tarth to spend Christmas with her father and was packing up when he got around calling her in the hope of finally not dodging the topic and instead just saying it.

Of course _she was on the way to Tarth. Because_ that _is what normal people in normal families do. They love one another and when they can’t see one another as often, they will spend the holidays together instead of hanging out with the rich loser who has the social maturity of a teenage boy when times get rough._

“Actually no,” Brienne answers. “Dad just recently got back in touch with some family members who moved to Essos before I was even born. They invited him to their Christmas party to get to know the children and grandchildren. At first he didn’t want to go, so not to make me sad, but I encouraged him to go.”

“How comes you don’t join the family get-together?” he asks.

“Because I made the agreement with Sansa to come to their family gathering on the second day of Christmas before dad got the invitation from them. And I won’t fly back and forth only just to meet people I don’t even know, family now or not,” the younger woman explains.

“Well, we don’t get to choose our family.”

“No, we don’t, but I think you can choose when to spend time with them and when not.”

“Tell that to my Father,” Jaime scoffs. Because he could surely use a break from the Lannister clan. But that is the issue when all live close to you – there is really no escape.

“Tywin Lannister is something else, as far as I gathered from your recollections thus far,” Brienne says, shaking her head. She always felt a strange kind of pity for Jaime on that matter. Her father is far from perfect, but she could always be sure of his love and support, even when he did not necessarily like the idea. After all, he still dreams of her staying on Tarth permanently, wind up with a husband and a child on the way, and some ten years later have a whole bunch of freckled, blond Evenstars run around Evenfall Hall. However, with Jaime, she got to know quite another level of parental expectations to live up to – because Tywin Lannister will enforce them, and if he does not succeed, he will let you know for the rest of time that he begrudges you for it.

“You’d have no idea,” Jaime huffs. The mere thought of tomorrow makes him shudder – and not just from the cold.

“And I don’t want to have any idea.”

“Maybe I should invite you to the Lannister Christmas Madness next time,” he ponders. “That would actually be perfect for me! I would have someone other than Tyrion to bitch about all this.”

“You bitch about everything going on with your family at gatherings the very first time we meet after the event,” Brienne argues.

“But then you could agree with me!” he insists, quite liking the idea inside his head, sitting on one of the many couches with her, making jokes about all the other guests, sipping mulled wine and getting closer and closer…

“Why would I come to the Lannister Christmas Madness beside for the moral support?” Brienne huffs.

“Isn’t that enough?”

She gives him a look.

“Well, you could consider it a service to a friend in need,” he suggests.

“And wouldn’t you agree that your father would rather have… a different kind of people over for the Christmas party, granted that he likes to have things oh so perfect?” Brienne snorts. 

Brienne wouldn’t want to imagine what Tywin Lannister may think of her, if she were to wind up at the residence with his oldest son, dressed in supposedly dress pants and a blazer because sure as hell would she not wear a dress to the event.

“What? Your father is… _famous_. My father has respect for your father, actually! Can you imagine how much that means when we are talking about Tywin Lannister?” Jaime argues. “I don’t have his respect and I am his oldest son!”

“That doesn’t mean he’d have respect for _me_ ,” Brienne insists.

As a matter of fact, she knows that she always has to gain respect with people and is never automatically entitled to it – because ugly people have to earn it first.

“I would make him,” Jaime says, and while he keeps his voice light, Brienne can sense at once that there is an underlying tone of sincerity underneath.

“You can’t get him to have respect for his second son.”

“Ouch, wench, ouch. That was a low blow.”

“Don’t call me wench.”

“It’s not that I can change it that he treats Tyrion that poorly. I can only ever dodge the bullet by changing subject or intervening once it happens while I am around,” Jaime laments, and Gods know he loathes that circumstance, perhaps even more than plastic Christmas trees with fake fir odor.

“Precisely, which is why I would much rather stay away from all of that,” Brienne argues.

“As any healthy person should. I was just hoping you’d be foolish enough in trying to rescue people in need.”

Brienne shakes her head. “You can defend yourself just fine.”

“Not against the family. There is no protection from their madness.”

“The only thing I can offer is that you could call me any time during that day and fake an emergency and I would give you a drive,” Brienne tells him, which gets Jaime’s attention. He twists his head around, looking at her almost aghast, “You would lie for me? I am positively shocked, Miss Tarth. Is it that you are no longer deserving of the wobbly halo after all?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have to lie, I would only have to ride the car. I find that within the limits of my capacities,” Brienne explains.

And while she is certainly no advocate of such behavior, with Jaime… she understands. It took her a time but he also taught her that the world is not as black and white as she used to see it before she met him.

“I am… I feel so touched. That you would do that for me,” he laughs, clutching at his chest with his left hand dramatically.

“Shut up!”

“Though honestly… thanks for the offer,” he adds in a quieter tone.

“The things we do for… good friends,” Brienne says, forcing a smile, surprising herself with how strained it suddenly feels, even though there should be no reason for it. Because they are friends, and that is what they will hopefully continue to be.

“Right. Well, I cut you off again. So second day of Christmas is with Sansa and the rest of the wolf pack. But how do you spend the other days, if not on Tarth?” Jaime asks, if only to distract himself from that odd sensation in the pits of his stomach again, because Brienne’s words felt like a small stab – even though they shouldn’t.

“Well, I will be leaving for Tarth for the end of the year. That was the agreement I had with dad. We won’t celebrate Christmas together, but then the New Year’s Eve at least.”

“Sounds fair. We get both, and there is no choice. Ever. At all. You could have diarrhea and Tywin Lannister would still force you to show up to sip some champagne.”

“Well, the first day of Christmas, I will be helping out in the local soup kitchen,” Brienne goes on to say. Jaime leans his head back, chuckling softly, “Ah, there she is again, St. Brienne.”

“Stop it!”

She is no saint, far from it.

“You go to friggin’ soup kitchens.”

“You are always welcome to join me,” Brienne argues.

“Hm, Father may like that. For publicity, you know?”

“That’s not why you should do it.”

“No, but that’s how I could sell it to him,” Jaime argues, only ever feeling reminded of just how sick all of this is. He has to lie to his father for those matters, he really does. And that should be telling about the Lannister clan.

“You have to sell it to him to… do good things?”

“Our family is twisted, you should know that by now, Brienne.”

“Very much so,” the younger woman huffs, shaking her head. “Anyway, tomorrow I will… simply be at home and enjoy not having to cook since I ordered food in advance from the restaurant just around the corner.”

“That may be the best Christmas idea I ever heard of.”

Brienne glances up at the dark sky with white speckles in-between. “It’s rather sad, don’t you think?”

“Why?” he asks, frowning. He would instantly join that kind of Christmas.

“Isn’t it that only the losers stay alone on Christmas Eve?” Brienne huffs.

_At least that is what I read in a note in a box once…_

“Do they?”

She shrugs. “Well, that’s what people say.”

“And people as a collective are bloody well stupid,” Jaime snorts.

“Might be. I just thought I would bypass all of the fuss that way,” Brienne exhales, but then tears her gaze away from the sky and back to Jaime. “And what about you? I’d think you will be stuck at the Lannister Residence tomorrow evening, huh?”

“For all it seems. Maybe we will be snowed in tomorrow, who knows?”

“Is there ever snow in King’s Landing before the Great Winter?”

“Not that I know.” He shakes his head.

“That means you are going.”

“I can keep dreaming of a white Christmas, snowed in, not having to leave bed, except to go eat and loo every once in a while,” Jaime snorts.

“Quite a dream.”

“You would think of it just the same way if you were forced though my Christmas year after year after year.”

“As I said, you can always call me to give you a ride,” Brienne assures him.

“My knight in shining armor,” Jaime laughs, gesturing wildly as he bows to her, only to slip away on the wet asphalt. Jaime yelps as he loses balance and prepares himself to make a nice landing on his right arm, but before he can hit the ground, he finds himself held up by the chest as Brienne is quick enough to grab him and pull him back to his feet.

The two look at one another for a moment too long, which makes Brienne realize only now that she still has her hands wrapped around him. She withdraws as though someone ran electricity through her spine all of a sudden. “S, sorry.”

“For catching me? I actually appreciated that, wench,” Jaime laughs, coughing lightly towards the end. “Wouldn’t fancy bruising my arse.”

Brienne shakes her head with an uncertain smile. Just why does her heart keep beating that fast? This is no different from helping him up in the gym, is it?

_Is it?_

“You truly are the shining knight in armor.”

“Wearing a hoodie and sweatpants,” Brienne snorts as they start walking again, stuffing her hands back in the hoodie’s muff.

Though sometimes she wished she were, but knighthood is not really a thing that has much space in the fast-moving world they live in.

“Not all heroes wear capes.”

“Capes are stupid anyway. Totally impractical.”

“But they look cool.”

“Impractical.”

“Not everything is about functionality,” Jaime argues, rolling his left wrist. “Like, Christmas decoration doesn’t serve any greater purpose either. People still do it.”

Brienne shrugs her shoulders. “Well, I don’t.”

“… wow, and I thought I was a downer around the season,” he laughs. Jaime actually thought Brienne would follow through with the routines, already for the simple reason that it is tradition.

“It’s as you say, it doesn’t have any use. I will wrap presents for Christmas in such paper like anyone else, but why kill a tree only just to have the needles in the house for half a year and pollute the world with light that only ever cost a small fortune?” Brienne points out to him.

“Maybe you are as terrible as you say, Brienne. You just destroyed Christmas for a whole lot of people,” Jaime laughs, leaning his head back.

“There’s no one here to hear it.”

“But the Seven are listening. And you made Santa cry, I am pretty sure,” he snickers.

“You think I can make Santa cry?”

“You can make me cry, and I don’t cry, normally,” he explains, looking back at her with a grin tugging at his lips

Brienne ignores his comment and instead lifts her head up to look at the sky to watch the cloud of her own breath climb into the dark night’s sky. The hood falls off her unruly curls, but Brienne doesn’t mind as she keeps glancing into the darkness above, only to feel something soft brush against her cheek, which turns to water and runs down the side of her face like a single tear.

“Snow,” she breathes, her eyes widening.

“Hm?”

“It’s snowing,” Brienne says, pointing one long finger up in the air. Jaime follows the direction and soon sees the white specks hanging in the air as well.

“I didn’t witness that ever since I moved here as a teenager. I shall be damned! Maybe wishes do come true if you dream just hard enough,” Jaime laughs, suddenly almost feeling light-headed.

“Well, I don’t think it will stick, but it is nice,” Brienne says in a soft voice, her gaze still upward to watch the speckles of white come closer and closer.

“Is there much snow on Tarth?” Jaime questions.

“Not always,” she answers, “but more often than here. And if we get snow, it’s the perfect kind, the type you can make the best snow balls with.”

“Oh, so you are into snowball fights? Who could have known?” he chuckles.

Brienne makes a face. “Who in his or her right mind isn’t?”

“Cersei lost interest in that very soon.”

“Well, Cersei is… _Cersei_.”

“A very true assessment,” Jaime snickers.

“Anyway, snowball fights are obligatory when there is good snow, at least in my humble opinion,” Brienne adds.

In fact, those are some of the few fond childhood memories she holds with other children. Because in a snow ball fight, it doesn’t really matter what you look like, you are just there for the game.

Only once you grow older does it get complicated.

“Well, it will be hard to do with just one hand, but you know, I can watch,” Jaime snorts, forcing a smile he doesn’t really mean.

“Then you just make small ones with one hand,” Brienne replies promptly.

Jaime shakes his head, laughing out loud. “You are always so practical.”

And that is the thing he appreciates about her so much – Brienne just always seems to have the solution, even if it is tough to get there, but she knows what direction to go even when he feels like the road is closed down.

“I actually had a snowball fight with my arm in a cast, so I know this is possible,” Brienne points out to him.

“Hm, maybe there is hope for a cripple like me after all,” he sighs.

“There is hope for someone who only has one hand, yes,” Brienne insists.

Jaime tilts his head to the side. “Why are you so allergic to it that I call myself a cripple every now and then?”

“Why are you so allergic when people make fun of Tyrion for his dwarfism? Why are you so allergic to people other than you calling me names and such?” she asks back.

“Because it’s not their right to do that,” Jaime replies simply, and Brienne nods her head in agreement. “And so it isn’t yours to talk a friend of mine down like that.”

He smiles at her as the two continue their walk to Brienne’s apartment, now with snowflakes sticking to their hair. With a strange kind of fascination he observes her movements shift in the freshly falling snow that won’t yet leave marks on the ground, as though her feet were already knee-deep in the white substance, but with a kind of grace he didn’t see on her just yet.

Though that is the thing with Brienne of Tarth, there is a great deal of things to discover about her.

In the streetlight, there is a strange kind of blur around her pale skin, as though it was a glow, as though there was no wobbly halo but an actual ring of light dancing on her straw-like hair.

They continue in silence, enjoying the tranquility of each other’s company, the tranquility of the empty streets, only ever interrupted by the crunching noise of their shoes as they cross the freshly fallen, perfect-for-snow-balls kind of snow laying over the street like a thin veil.

At last, her apartment comes into sight.

“There we are,” Brienne announces.

“There we are,” he repeats, the same kind strange kind of dread settling in the pit of his stomach that was there all the while whenever it felt like parting from Brienne this way or the other. “And just to be sure, you can keep the clothes for as long as it takes. I have plenty of those at home, so just return them when you find the time.”

Brienne looks at him for a long moment, her blue eyes sparking up in almost jade color in the yellowish streetlight above their heads.

“Or… you could come upstairs, I change, and you can take them back with you,” Brienne says, chewing on her lower lip pensively. Jaime wants to know what is on her mind, but all is a blur, just like the snow above their heads.

“I reckoned you’d rather want to have some alone-time after the trauma of a bad stripper, stuck as an angel with a wobbly halo in yoga pants,” Jaime says uncertainly. On any other day, he would long since be climbing the stairs leading up to her apartment, but now, it all feels different, and the feeling in his stomach just gets worse and worse.

“It’s fine,” Brienne assures him.

“It’s also fine if I just went home. I don’t want to be a bother,” Jaime argues.

“I already destroyed your pre-Christmas plans, so I might, at the very least, treat you to some of your favorite coffee,” Brienne suggests, not quite sure why she insists on that right now, but something tells her that she owes him that much to mend what may have gotten cracks thanks to the present that came back from the past to screw up her present.

Jaime gapes at her. “You got some? They were sold out when I went there two days ago. They said they won’t get anything new before next year.”

“Guess who bought the last package.” She smirks.

“How dare you? Well, you know what that means, right?”

“No?”

“There is no other way but that you get me coffee in the morning until they have the brand back in store,” he tells her.

“You expect me to run up to your apartment early in the morning?” she scoffs.

“I could also come by on the way to work.”

Brienne makes a face. “My apartment is not even on your way to work.”

“I have a nice car that can take me even off the usual tracks.”

“Just for coffee?” she questions, shaking her head, unable to help the smile.

She doesn’t know how he does it, but Jaime is one of the few people who can make her smile even when she normally would not.

“Well, and a bit of a chat, maybe. Plus, your morning hair is all kinds of funny.”

Brienne blushes, recounting that one time she let Jaime crash on her couch after they were out for far too late after watching a game together in a nearby bar and he was too wasted to make it home by himself. It was a very strange experience to have Jaime draped across her couch, though she knew right where she was when she walked into the living room the next morning to check on him, only for Jaime to have a laughing fit at her hair standing up in all kinds of directions.

She rolls her eyes. “I am always glad to be a joking matter to you.”

“Just the morning hair,” he snickers.

“Not everyone has the kind of hair for the TV commercials like you,” Brienne argues, gesturing at him with the back of her hand.

“It’s one of the few genetic gifts that was passed down to me, alongside immense wealth, good looks, and a great personality.”

“The latter is up to debate to me.”

“But the others aren’t? Does that mean you find me handsome, Brienne of Tarth?” Jaime teases.

“There is no denying that you are… conventionally attractive,” Brienne answers, kicking snow away with her feet.

“I never heard you say that before,” he notes with amusement.

Though he quite likes it.

“I was trying to be nice,” she scoffs.

“You were just being honest.”

“As I said, a look in the mirror should already tell you that you are indeed… handsome. But anyway. It’s either that you agree to have a coffee now or I will be going because against the odds of the thermal clothes, I start to freeze.”

“Well, I can’t say no to my coffee.”

“It’s _my_ coffee. I am just willing to share.”

“I pointed out the brand to you,” Jaime insists. “This is coffee-plagiarism.”

“I think there are worse crimes than that.”

“Most definitely.”

They proceed up the stairs leading to Brienne’s apartment.

Jaime draws in a deep breath upon entering, taking in the scent of a place he didn’t spend that much time at just yet, but still has this strange feeling of belonging for ever since he crossed the threshold for the first time.

And suddenly, his stomach feels far less like being stuffed with stones.

Brienne moves over to the kitchen and fills fresh coffee beans into the fancy machine she treated herself when she moved to King’s Landing. Because there truly is nothing quite like a good cup of coffee in the morning.

“You didn’t lie about not decorating at all,” Jaime comments, looking around.

“Because I try not to lie, as you may recall,” Brienne answers, taking out two mugs as the machine starts to heat up.

“I thought that there would be at least… a little something you didn’t find worth mentioning. Like a candle or a snow globe or whatever,” Jaime argues as he shrugs out of his coat to put on the hanger.

“I don’t like those,” Brienne comments, shaking her head, putting the mugs down in place for the coffee to pour into. With a press of the blue button, it starts to rumble and grown as the coffee beans are automatically grinded to add to the brew.

“Why wouldn’t you like snow globes? I thought that is one of those things people universally liked?” Jaime frowns.

“I don’t.”

“But _why_ don’t you?”

“I don’t know, unless you keep shaking them, they are just globes filled with water,” Brienne explains, rolling her shoulders.

“Seriously, and I thought I am the one who is a Christmas downer,” he laughs.

“In the comfort of my home, I can be as much of a Christmas downer as I want to be,” Brienne argues.

_One of the few perks of being alone. You get to be yourself without anyone laughing at you.  
_

“And that is the kind of thing I need in my life,” Jaime sighs.

“For that you have pre-Christmas,” Brienne argues.

“Well, I didn’t stay long enough to fully engage in my Christmas-ranting, which is part of the tradition by now,” Jaime laments. Because that is what normally happens after he’s had a few drinks: he will let out all frustration over the holiday season that drives him near mad so he can go on… drinking, but with less bitching.

It’s a bit like confessing one’s sins in sept, Jaime reckons, but then again, he is not religious, really.

Brienne shakes her head again, this time with a smile. “You have odd traditions.”

“I am an odd person.”

“I won’t object to that.”

“You are odd as well.”

“I won’t object to that either,” Brienne sighs before the smell of freshly brewing coffee enters her nose, easing out some of the tension she still feels in her body. Her mind soon returns to Jaime standing by the kitchen counter, though, which reminds Brienne that she may have some more debts to repay.

“Well, then fire away,” she says, much to Jaime’s confusion as he just grimaces at her with confusion in his eyes. “Fire away what?”

“The Christmas-ranting,” Brienne scaffolds. “If that is your pre-Christmas tradition, then so it is. And since I dragged you away from it, you should get your shot of having your pre-Christmas traditions after all.”

“You truly are too good for this world, Brienne,” he snorts.

“I am trying my best. So, get going before I change my mind,” Brienne tells him.

Jaime sucks in a deep breath. “Thank you so much. This has been building up for months by now.”

“As I said, fire away.”

“… Why do people wear those hideous Christmas sweaters for around the season but will otherwise dress like they are straight from a fashion magazine? And Christmas cards with family pictures! Who ever invented that shit? I know what my family looks like in hideous Christmas sweaters. Why am I supposed to hang that on my fridge now? Just because it’s Christmas time doesn’t mean you have to put spices into everything. No sane person would at any other time of the year eat and drink everything with spices. Oh, and wrapping presents! AS a one-handed man, this is torture, I am telling you! Torture, unless I pay people to do it for me! And weather forecast with percentages of how likable it is going to snow, even though everyone knows it won’t because it didn’t for the past years and Winter is not yet to come for at least another year. Oh, and did I ever mention eggnog to you?”

“More than once.”

“That stuff deserves a special place in hell,” Jaime grunts. Just thinking about it makes him shudder again.

“You have a lot of feelings because of drinks. Coffee, eggnog…”

Jaime nods his head. “Coffee is on one end of the spectrum of goodness, eggnog on the other.”

“Ah. Well, anything else to complain about?” Brienne asks.

“… not really,” Jaime says, surprising himself with that, because normally, his list is much, much longer, but now, he can’t think of much of anything besides how comfortable it feels to be in her apartment right now, with Brienne brewing his favorite kind of coffee.

“Do you feel better now?” Brienne asks.

He nods slowly. “Immensely.”

Brienne smirks as she turns around with a mug in hand which she hands over to Jaime. He inhales the familiar vapors, feeling the fine hairs in his neck stand up in anticipation of the taste he knows he is about to have rolling down his tongue. His lips curl around the mug and he takes a swig, relishing every second of it.

“This – good. Everything else – bad,” he says, pointing at the mug.

“It’s quite decent, I agree.”

“ _Decent_?” Jaime repeats. “This is the best damned coffee to be found anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms.”

“If you think that.”

“What? Are you telling me you have better coffee than that?”

“ _Maybe_.”

“I won’t believe unless I tasted it myself,” he huffs.

“You don’t trust me?” she teases.

“Oh, I trust you without hesitation, wench, but I don’t always trust your taste.”

Brienne tilts her head to the side. “How so?”

“You have a terrible taste at picking your friends. I am the best example of that.” He smirks.

“That is yet to reveal itself,” Brienne argues.

“You still have faith that you can change me for the better? How daring of you.”

“I don’t have faith as much as an… expectation,” the younger woman insists. “Because I know you can if you put your mind to it.”

Jaime looks at her, stunned for a moment, but then she walks past him over to the bedroom at the other end of the living room.

“I’ll be getting changed.”

“Need a hand?”

“What?”

“What?”

Brienne shakes her head as she walks inside and disappears from view.

Jaime wanders about the room, rolling the hot mug between his fingers, listens to the sound of her footsteps from the other side of the wall.

“You know, I was wondering,” he then calls out.

“Please no more complaints about eggnog!” she retorts from inside the bedroom.

“Nothing of that sort. It’s just… I…” He hesitates.

“What’s the matter, Lannister? Cat got your tongue?”

“Not a cat, no,” Jaime answers, closing his eyes as he gathers himself. “You were rather vague about what happened that triggered you when you opened my present.”

“As I said, I don’t like revisiting those matters,” Brienne says, suddenly feeling short of breath. Couldn’t it have stayed that simple? Couldn’t they have buried all that nonsense over some decent coffee and their usual banter and teasing?

Just why can’t she have normal?

Just why do odd people never have it easy?

“It’s just… I told you a great deal about myself, a lot of my shittiest moments, and…,” Jaime tells her, but Brienne cuts him off, “I didn’t know we were keeping a list on those matters.”

“I don’t, and that’s not what I am…,” Jaime stammers, only to stop himself with an annoyed intake of air. “I am not making sense again, am I?”

And here he is, right back to being a foolish teenager who keeps talking nonsense.

Just what is wrong with him tonight?

“You want to know the story, I get that part, but… I would much rather forget about it,” Brienne answers.

“I mean, I don’t want to guilt-trip you or anything, but… it’s just that I think you can tell me, or should be able to feel like you can. Because we are friends, right?”

“Yes, we are,” she confirms.

Inside the bedroom, Brienne sits down on the edge of the bed, clutching Jaime’s hoodie against her flat chest, inhaling the scent of his aftershave still sticking to collar.

Jaime is a true friend indeed, perhaps the first and only one she’s ever had.

And doesn’t that mean he has a point? Jaime told her a great deal about himself, even those things most others wouldn’t ever say out loud. He even told her about that whole trouble between him and his sister back during their earlier years. Yet, she keeps silent about those matters because she doesn't want him to look at her differently. But if he is courageous enough to tell her those things, well aware that they may change the way she looks at him, is it really fair of her to keep that from him?

Is that perhaps the reason why she feels such unease? Because her heart already knows the answer even though her mind is still fighting it?

“… Did you know that the Stormlands have a peculiar system when it comes to school sports?” she asks at last.

“Come again?” Jaime calls out, his lips curling into an uncertain frown. He actually didn’t expect Brienne to open up.

“Because we have a lot of small islands there, it is tough to have a functioning league in school sports, for competition and all. Thus, the Stormlands put together leagues from across that part of the country. The Stormlands Little League and Major League once we go into high school and later on college,” Brienne goes on.

“Rings a bell. I think Robert was big in there before… he got big.”

“I was quite invested myself, you might be able to guess.”

He chuckles. “I would have reckoned as much.”

“Well, story time: that is how I got to know my first boyfriend. He was on one of the other football teams that competed. We had mixed teams. As I said, small numbers, so I was actually on a men’s team… though I was one of three girls who were part of the mix. We didn’t compete against one another because his team didn’t make it to the finals while ours did. Our fathers knew one another from business relations. Ronnet Connington.”

“Heard the name, never met the guy, though,” Jaime comments, sensing that no good is going to come out of that story. A part of him feels a strong urge to go inside the bedroom, while another keeps him firmly standing in the middle of the living room, so not to interrupt, keep his distance. Nevertheless, there is a voice telling him from the pit of his stomach that he should be by her side.

“Anyway, we had some nice chats between games and Ronnet gave me his number when we parted ways again. For me, that evidently meant a great deal. No guy’s ever done that before.”

“Teenage love affairs,” he sighs with a grin.

“Just that it wasn’t love really, or rather… at all,” Brienne comments, letting her head hang low.

“So it didn’t last long,” Jaime concludes.

“For about two months. There was a big Christmas party slash charity event for the people who competed in the tournament. Since we won so often with our team, we were supposed to get an award for outstanding sportsmanship as well as for the charity things we did,” Brienne goes on to explain.

“So many saints in the Stormlands,” Jaime huffs, shaking his head. I wonder how Robert could ever come from there.”

“There are surely not just saints in the Stormlands,” Brienne snorts. “Anyway. I had texted with Ronnet a lot before that party and I felt really special about it. I even had gathered the courage to ask him whether he wanted to come to Evenfall Hall over the Christmas break or so. He declined, arguing that he was to stay with the family. _Obviously_ , I understood that and felt like a fool for even daring to make the suggestion. Well, I already thought I had lost my boyfriend, but then he texted me and said that he’d also be at the Christmas party. And how we could finally meet again. He made it sound like we were making it official. I was so thrilled. He even told me he’d have a gift for me. So I spent the remains of December looking for the perfect gift.”

“I get a bad feeling about all that,” Jaime says, his voice strained as he finds his fingers curling tighter around the mug already starting to turn cold.

And again, something tells him to move, but another part tells him to stay, not to move.

“I did not back then, even though I should have known better, but yeah, teenagers are foolish things. Hormones and all. I dressed up as best as I could and thought I looked rather presentable. When I got there, I was surprised how Ronnet’s teammates were all over me, greeted me, wanted to get to know me. The guys even asked me for a dance, and Ronnet always told them to go ahead if I wanted, and of course I wanted. I felt so special after all. My team got the prize and I thought I was having the time of my life,” Brienne recounts, glancing up to the ceiling, looking for snow she knows won’t fall in here to soothe her mind. “Gods am I glad in retrospective that my father was not around because he was ill by the time.”

Jaime frowns. “Why?”

“He would have murdered them, I suppose. Dad is rather protective of me.”

“What happened that would have had Selwyn Tarth consider manslaughter?” Jaime asks.

“Well, all were in a festive mood. A lot of people started to exchange gifts because it’s customary. I was sitting at the edge of my seat when Ronnet walked up to me. I was as giddy as a little kid getting to see Santa in the mall for the first time when he unwrapped the gift, a jersey of his favorite football player, signed by said player. My father had some relations to the league because he still is an investor. So you know, I was rather sure he would like it. He loved it, he said.”

“… What did he give you, then?” Jaime asks, not quite sure whether he really wants to know the answer, because he can hear pain in her voice, and that makes him want to stop it all just so Brienne’s voice goes back to normal, goes back to banter and faint smiles.

“Lingerie. Of the really… sexy kind, if you get me. Red lace and transparent in places surely not fitting either a young woman my age or… a woman my stature in general. The card _innovatively_ read something along the lines how I truly must have been a fool to believe that he could possibly be into me, because I should have looked in the mirror before in my life right? The lingerie was meant to be a parting gift, because maybe that would fool some dumb guy into mistaking me for a sow in silks and fuck me regardless of the looks. The guys who had danced with me surely had a great laugh. I didn’t notice until it was too late that they’d gathered around me, took their pics and giggled themselves shitless. They were all in on the oh so great joke. Later on I heard that it was a bet Ronnet lost. He was forced to talk to me during the tournament because of that. And he turned it into another bet because he wanted to impress his friends by taking it one step further by tricking _Brienne the Beauty_ into believing that a guy like him would want to date her. He thanked me for the nice gift and told me that he hoped I’d enjoy mine as well.”

Brienne looks down, letting the sweater rest on her thighs. At some point she is glad that Jaime isn’t inside the room right now, or else he would see her like the mess she was back then – and Brienne doesn’t really need that ever again in her life.

That box was buried for good, until now at least.

“So yeah, opening that gift you gave me for the Dirty Secret Santa… it brought me right back to the girl who spent the next fifty minutes in a stall in the bathroom, until I was forced out and Renly came up to dance with me instead. He told me not to let those nasty little shits see my tears because they were not worth it… And that was the beginning of the tale of how I fell in deep love with a gay guy, as you will remember….” She smiles sadly. “Anyway, the point is, the gift just brought this back. The packaging looked so similar and when the laughter ensued, I was right back to that badly decorated hall, reminded of the fact that I am the ugliest girl the world’s ever seen. And I hated that about myself because I normally fought back, but not on that occasion.”

Brienne didn’t do much of anything. She just felt numb, numb and vulnerable, something Brienne hoped she got rid of when she picked up close combat as a sword and learned of another way to defend herself. And to this day, this vulnerability haunts her, it drives her mad because now as a grown woman, Brienne knows that she can’t let people treat her that way and get away with it. But back then, she felt like she had no weapons because beating him up wouldn’t fix anything. It took her a few more years to learn how to distance herself from it all, how to find other ways of defense.

“On the upside, I got back at him about a year later. He dared to compete against our team… let’s just say that it didn’t end pretty for him,” she says, smiling even though she feels like crying, as much as that frustrates Brienne in turn.

_Still a teenage girl when it matters most, isn’t it?_

“I swore to myself not to return to that state of mind, but as the incident at the gym showed, what really drove me so mad that I couldn’t face you or the guys until now is that it made me realize that I didn’t really change. I thought I’d toughened up. One moment is enough to send me back to my insecure teenage self who was so desperate for attention, for love, that she was blind enough not to see through something that was so very clear. So, so, so clear.”

Her eyes sting with tears threatening to fall and Brienne thinks about how that is certainly no part of the pre-Christmas tradition as it should be. She already wants to add some words of banter to return back to normal, to return back to the adult self of hers who has a normal albeit odd friendship with a man who takes her seriously even when he jokes and teases more often than not.

But Brienne never gets to it.

She doesn’t hear the footsteps, she doesn’t see the shadow approaching from the side. Even when her eyes catch Jaime striding over to her with long strides and kneeling down in front of her, her mind won’t register it, won’t let it sink in. Instead, Brienne just stares at the man as he reaches up and holds on tight to her wordlessly.

She can only stare when her heart starts beating faster, faster, faster still.

She can only stare when she feels his warmth seep into her skin.

She can only stare, stare and hold on as well.

Not let go.

"I'm sorry for that," he mutters, still holding on to her, because Jaime doesn't really know what else to do, how else to express it that he wants to be there for her, even if that means awkwardly hugging her on her bed while she wears Christmas-themed yoga pants with snow flakes on them. 

It might be that he babbles like a useless teenager tonight, but this he can do, this he can do to move forward.

"Not your fault," she argues, her voice faint, still too overtaken by the raw emotion that simple gesture comes with.

When he pulls away to look at her, Brienne is still just about as stunned as when she saw him come into the bedroom.

_This night is truly messed-up._

“Do you come to know where that Ronnet Connington lives these days?” he asks quietly.

“What? Why would you want to know that?” she asks, sensing the change in his voice instantly. 

“I may have a Christmas present for him this year,” he answers darkly.

“What? Alright, now stop. This has been dealt with,” Brienne argues, nervousness entering her mind where shock was seconds ago.

“Doesn’t mean I couldn’t punch him another time. Smack him real hard with my prosthetic hand...," he ponders, finding it oh so tempting. 

 “You won’t beat up Ronnet Connington. As I said, he was dealt with long time ago.”

Just because it dared to come back just now in a memory hiding in a small box with a red bow doesn't mean that she wants to go back there ever again. Quite on the contrary, she wants to close that chapter, so she may act like her adult self again, instead of reducing herself to a teenager who should have known better but did not.

“But…,” he means to say, but she cuts him off before he can finish the sentence, “Jaime, now get that thought right out of your head. I didn’t even want to revisit that. Do you sincerely think that I have any interest in meeting the guy another time in person?”

“You wouldn’t have to. Just give me his contact details. And if you insist that I do him no bodily harm, I may just as well see about whether there is a way to fuck up his business a little bit.”

“You won’t do that.”

“I could. I am a Lannister.”

“You are better than that.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be,” he points out to her.

Because right now, he feels very, very dark, and Jaime actually likes it that way.

“But you should and you can. I can defend myself just fine, you should know by now, Jaime. I did it for all my life, and so I did it with Ronnet Connington. It’s part of the past, and that should be the end of it.”

“Just because you can defend yourself doesn’t mean you should have to, though,” Jaime argues. “I can do it, too, if you let me.”

“And what would be the advantage for me if I were to let you defend me in my stead, hm?” she wants to know.

“Well, for one, imagine how pissed he’d be to have someone defend your honor like that. And then it’s Jaime fuckin’ Lannister,” he suggests.

“Ego much.”

“You would be indebted to me.”

“That is no advantage for me, though, now is it?” she huffs.

“… but that would mean I would feel less indebted to you, so one could say you’d do a friend a favor so he can feel less like a shit about some many things,” Jaime argues, bowing his head.

_Apparently, pre-Christmas is the night of admissions now._

Brienne frowns at that. “What many things would you be talking about? I thought I made it clear by now that I was never mad at you but at myself.”

“I am not talking about the yoga pants,” he mutters.

“Then what?”

Jaime licks his lips, keeping his eyes downcast. “You put up with me when we still barely knew one another, and you got to know me at my most definite low up until now. I was a bitchy asshole mad at the world for taking his hand and I didn’t much care who was on the receiving end on the comments I made just so I wouldn’t feel that much pain anymore.”

Brienne sighs heavily. “Jaime.”

“I mean that, I do. Even though I never got around saying it – because I am an ass like that. You took my bullshit and served it back to me, but you didn’t look at me differently the way everyone else did just coz I was a cr… I only had one hand. We were hardly friends and yet… you made sure I didn’t quit. When I felt like stopping coming to the gym, you were the one to wind up at my condo and demand that I come back and settle the fight with you,” Jaime laughs sadly, calling to mind how shocked he was when she knocked on his door and wouldn’t leave no matter how often he told her to stay away.

“I was surprised myself at how much I insisted,” Brienne admits. She never did that before, really, but then again, she never had a friend like that before whose presence she wanted around no matter how much he keeps annoying her.

“And I was glad for it, even if I wasn’t at that point of time. You kept dragging me back on the road when I got lost, and there’s seemingly no way to give that back. In fact, I have a tendency to make things worse because of bad judgment calls on supposedly the little things that can be very big. Like yoga pants.”

“You could not know,” Brienne argues.

“Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt you. And for that I am sorry.”

“But it was not you,” the younger woman insists.

“Maybe not the gift, but the stuff before that, the crap I gave you that you never got a proper apology from me for. As I said some many times, I am a terrible influence on someone like you.”

“If you believe for only just a second that I would stay around you only just for matters of charity, you are gravely mistaken,” Brienne insists. “It is true that you annoy me beyond a word’s description more often than not. And it is certainly also true that there are moments I want to hit you. Really hard.”

“Just like there are times when you do hit me,” he chuckles.

“But I stay around because I got to know the guy apart from the magazine covers and, apart from the guy who is the face for the _Casterly Inc_. ad campaigns. The type of a guy who walks a woman like me home even though he certainly has better to do and knows for a fact that any thief can count himself lucky to survive a fight with me if it came to it.”

Jaime looks up to her, finding himself almost swept away by the kindness in her big blue eyes with which those orbs seem to be overflowing right at this moment.

“I’d always pity the guy who dared. He’d surely lose a limb,” Jaime comments with a small smirk.

_Won’t stop me from walking you home, though, wench. You are not the only mule in town._

“I value our friendship. And I am glad to see how much of a way you came since you first walked into the gym, being a miserable pain in the arse. I am not even sure whether I would have managed what you did, pulling yourself out of that low with discipline and insistence, after all that’s happened to you. Considering how little it took me to waver, you may have something ahead of me after all,” Brienne tells him sadly.

“I really would just like to pay back. A Lannister always…,” he means to say, but she stops him by softly patting his shoulder.

“There are some things you don’t have to pay back for. They are given freely, you know. They come free of charge. I know that in your world, that doesn't happen too often, but rest assured that whatever I did, I did willingly, and I would never demand, let alone want, to have you repay me for it in any kind of way,” Brienne tells him. “Some things are just… gifts, you know? They are not meant to be returned in kind. They are given because the other wants it, needs it, because he can use it, will be happy about it. And I dare to say that I got a lot out of the bargain already.”

“How so?” he asks.

“I didn’t really have a good friend until you started to bother me.”

And she wouldn’t want to lose him ever again.

“I give the compliment right back,” he snorts.

And he wants to be sure to keep her.

“So… can we put this finally to rest? All of it? Because I don’t want that to loom over our friendship. For that, it is too important a gift,” Brienne asks, looking him deep in the eye.

“Alright. So I don’t get to hit him.”

“No.”

“Smack him.”

“No.”

“Humiliate him.”

“No.”

He rolls his eyes. “Ugh.”

“Something you can add to your ranting list, then.”

“For all Christmases yet to come, I don’t get to beat up Ronnet Connington. Indeed quite a misery. Though perhaps not as bad as eggnog,” Jaime ponders.

She laughs, shaking her head. “You and the eggnog, an endless tale of hatred.”

“It’s a tradition.”

“ _In any case_ , now I totally forgot what I was actually here for, which was to get changed so you can have your clothes back,” Brienne says, shaking her head. She means to get up, but Jaime won’t move out of her way to give her that much space, instead, he takes up the space between them, his eyes not leaving hers for only just a second.

Brienne is surprised by the sudden change, the sudden determination glancing back at her.

“Is something wrong? Cramp in the arm or…,” she mutters, at a loss.

“No.”

“Then what’s the matter?” Brienne asks faintly.

“Want to know another secret?” he questions back in turn.

Brienne blinks. “… Sure.”

“You said you felt like a fool for planning Christmas break with that asshole.”

“And I certainly was a fool for it,” she scoffs.

“Well, imagine how I may feel like – because before all of that Dirty Secret Santa business went down the toilet, I actually… I had a plan.”

“A plan,” Brienne repeats. “Now that is new. You normally improvise.”

“I had a plan, yes. Not that well thought out, I will admit, but a plan no less.”

“… and what was the plan?” Brienne asks.

“To finally ask you if you wanted to spend at least a little time with your awkward if, by your own admission, good-looking friend from the gym over the holidays so he may feel a little bit less like a Christmas downer.”

Brienne gapes, the air catching in her throat. “You did?”

“Yup,” Jaime confirms. “Because there is one simple truth, if there ever is a simple truth to much of anything: Beside my family, there is actually just one other person I got to know whom I want to see during that most troublesome season. And that is you. Because let me tell you, Brienne, I have been a miserable pain in the ass ever since we had that fight, if you can even call it that. And I only ever started feeling better once you and I sorted it out, now with wobbly halo or without. I was so lost in my mind I stirred my beer with a fuckin’ candy cane.”

Brienne makes a face, though her heart is beating so fast that she can barely take notice of anything else. “Why would you do that?”

“The beer had that as decoration and I was with my mind any other place but the bar,” Jaime says, shaking his head. Why did he even mention it?

Seriously, his foolish teenage self needs some more lessons on how to follow through with an argument from beginning to end. After all, this is important, much more important than Jaime ever would have guessed when he went to the pre-Christmas celebration of hitting the bars around town.

“But who decorates beer with candy canes?” Brienne makes a face. 

“Just my thinking!" he cries out, thankful that someone finally understands, but then catches himself again. "But that is… not at all the point.”

“No, it’s not,” Brienne whispers, chewing on her lower lip. “I suppose.”

“I think the reason why this mess got so much bigger than it should have been is… that… you and I… are not _just_ friends, aren’t we? Like… I mean, we are friends and I wouldn’t want to not be friends anymore, but it's… I am trying to come up with something meaningful to say, I am, but… I didn’t really plan on that bit,” he mutters, shaking his head. Inside his mind, this sounded a lot better, but now? Now he is right back to being that teenager and he wants to kick the boy into action.

“So… you get what I am trying to say?” he asks hopefully. "Please say yes so I can stop babbling."

“I think I do,” Brienne answers faintly.

“And… what do you think about that?” he questions. "... How do you feel about that?"

“I can’t say I think anything much right now. That is… quite a shock. I didn’t even think that you could possibly… I mean… look at you, look at me,” Brienne stammers, gesturing at the both of them.

The note in the box taught her, after all, of what to expect, based on her looks and very nature.

“I am,” Jaime says simply, looking her right in the eye as he speaks.

“Well, then you see what I try to put into words, if miserably so,” Brienne says, forcing an awkward grimace.

Because she is still her awkward teenage self when it comes to those things, as Brienne was reminded of tonight.

“I know what you mean but… I don’t see it, no,” Jaime answers, gathering more and more courage as he keeps talking. “I only ever see you.”

Brienne wants to say something, but suddenly all air leaves her.

“You still didn’t answer me,” Jaime points out to her.

“Because I don’t know what to say.”

“Try. As you keep telling me when I don’t know how to go on. Just try,” Jaime urges her.

Because he needs an answer quite desperately, in fact.

Because he just admitted to a truth he wasn’t even ready for himself just yet and Jaime cannot say he knows how to go on from here if they weren’t on the same page regarding the matter.

Because he doesn’t want to lose her.

In fact, he can’t afford to lose her.

Jaime is surprised when she leans down and captures his lips, though Jaime reckons he should have guessed that this would be the language she could try with because it is only honesty Brienne speaks, and that seems to be the one answer she can give.

And it is the one answer he needs, really.

“I am… I am sorry, I… I didn’t know what to say and…,” Brienne stammers, her eyes unnaturally wide with shock, only ever emphasized by the brightly red blush on her freckled cheeks.

And damn, does he love the sight of that already.

And damn, did he love that for much longer than he knew.

Because the truth seems so simple that it almost hurts his head that he didn’t get the hint sooner.

_But then again, I am not supposed to be the brains of the family, go figure._

“I am not sorry at all,” Jaime says with a smile. “Only if we don’t do it again. Because that was… damn good.”

_Yet again an understatement._

And in fact it was all that it took to make that uneasy feeling go away, because now he feels as weightless as the snowflakes that rained down on their heads earlier.

Sometimes, you have to improvise, after all, for better or worse. 

He watches Brienne’s lips curl into an uncertain frown, which soon morphs into a smile on the verge of erupting into actual, honest laughter. And he finds himself joining in.

It is ridiculous if you think about it, but then again, what was ever normal in his life?

What is normal anyway, considering that they are indeed two very odd people who found common ground in each other’s company alone?

Jaime reaches up to brush some unruly hair out of her face, momentarily forgetting that he is trying to do it with his stump, and for a moment he wants to flinch away again, but when she won’t, he does not either.

They kiss again, gaining confidence with every moment shared in one breath, one touch melting together.

“You know, at this rate, I may have to get you some new yoga pants,” Jaime almost roars into her ear when he trails a kiss down the thick column of her neck.

“What?” Brienne asks, frowning.

“I may be that close to ripping them off of you," he growls. 

“Those were a gift,” she points out to him.

“You don’t even like them,” he argues, looking at her with a ridiculous kind of grin.

“They may grow on me.”

“Even the red Santa hot pants?” he teases.

“ _Maybe_. Christmas miracles seem to happen every once in a while after all,” Brienne answers, wondering how it is possible that she suddenly doesn’t feel like that teenage girl at all anymore, even though she was so close not too long ago.

But now that the box is out in the open and Jaime got to see it, Brienne finds that it is not nearly as threatening as it was, looming at her from the shadows of the darkest corners of her mind.

“They do indeed,” Jaime smirks before resuming kissing her.

As ridiculous as they may seem at first, they sometimes hold the simple if great truths, which means that he may have been wrong about Christmas being the worst time of the year.

Because right now, right at this moment, Jaime can’t imagine anywhere else he’d rather be, anywhere else he’d rather stay. 

 

* * *

 

_Epilog_

 

Jaime pries his eyes open slowly when he hears the sound of a very bad version of the Christmas Song _The Snowy Season of My Love_ by Tom-o-Sevens rings shrilly. He slowly lifts his head, barely lifting it out of the comfy, big, fluffy covers he finds himself almost drowning in. With a grunt, he sticks his arm out and reaches beside the bed to fish for his jeans.

_Tyrion shall be damned._

“ello?” he mutters into the phone.

“Brother! A blessed merry Christmas to you! At last I get a hold of you, I already thought I would have to call the police. You abandoned us right when it got funny.”

“Yeah, I saw,” Jaime mutters, barely moving his lips apart. “Where are you at?”

“My apartment,” Tyrion announces.

“With the girl?”

“Yup.”

“Bronn?”

“He took two home.”

“How did I know that?” Jaime sighs.

“And you?”

“I… walked Brienne home to escape the hen’s night entourage,” Jaime answers, images of snow and hoodies coming back to his mind, the smell of coffee and the scent of her shampoo, the taste of her lips. A smile spreads across his face at that.

“Ah, my chivalrous big brother. So I assume you two resolved the issue.”

“One could say so,” Jaime laughs.

_In more than one way._

“Oh, and did you know that I must have been a very good dwarf this year?”

Jaime frowns. “Why?”

“It’s quite possible we may have dodged the bullet of attending the Christmas Party of Madness this year,” Tyrion explains.

“How so?” Jaime asks, his grimace only ever deepening. There is no way of escaping that hell. He long since accepted that circumstance.

“I wished upon a star and it was granted to me, I am telling you. You will know once you see it. Must suck for Cersei that she came a day earlier just to show off her boyfriend and piss off Father,” Tyrion giggles.

“I would be glad not to be around for that,” Jaime huffs, making a face.

“I actually want video material of that to use against her, but oh well. I will say that meeting up with ladies from hen’s night should be added to our pre-Christmas tradition from now on, though,” Tyrion says with a grin.

“I would rather not.”

“Spoilsport.”

“If that’s all, I’d like to hang up now,” Jaime sighs.

“Tell Brienne merry Christmas from me,” Tyrion says knowingly.

“How do you…?” Jaime mutters, but his brother supplies an answer before he can finish, “Oh, my lovesick brother, you would not sound like you do if she weren’t right there with you. Anyway. In case we don’t see each other, and for once I actually hope so, I wish you a merry Christmas, brother dear. Enjoy your actual Christmas without the madness for once. You know it’s got to come back to us next year.”

“Merry Christmas,” Jaime mutters as he hangs up. Jaime puts the phone down on the nightstand before rolling onto his back, letting out a sigh.

He _never_ felt that good on Christmas day. Though he could _certainly_ get used to it.

Jaime turns his head when he sees the blankets shift beside him, only for Brienne to peek her head out.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” he asks with a grimace.

“That song is from hell,” Brienne grunts. “Why would you have that as a ringtone? I thought you officially hated Christmas, already for that matter already.”

“Tyrion likes to change it when I am not looking, just to piss me off,” Jaime explains.

“How’s he?” Brienne asks with a sigh.

“Good. He and Shae… got quite along.”

Brienne chuckles softly at that. “So it seems.”

Jaime swipes his stump over her head affectionately to ease some of her unruly hair out of her face.

“No comment about the morning hair,” she warns him.

“I told you I find it cute. And anyway, after last night… it’s hardly surprising that it’s properly _screwed_.”

“Oh, shush now,” she huffs, knocking against his shoulder lightly, which only has Jaime laugh ever the harder. “And I have any intention to do so again.”

“Don’t you have Christmas Madness today?” she questions.

“Tyrion said his wish was granted and we wouldn’t have to go,” Jaime says, leaning on his forearm to take a good look at her, though most of Brienne is buried in the same sheets he almost drowned in earlier.

“Was he still very drunk?” Brienne suggests. “Because I would dare to doubt that otherwise.”

“He sounded rather sober, actually,” Jaime argues.

Brienne furrows her eyebrows at that. “But what would he mean by that?”

“Don’t know,” Jaime sighs.

He frowns when he sees two long, very long legs swinging out of bed, followed by the rest of Brienne sitting up straight on the other side of the bed. Jaime enjoys the view of her great back, calling back to how he traced it with his fingers and his stump the night before, to memorize, to never forget again.

“Hey, no, c’mon, I thought we could enjoy the peace at least a while longer. Plus… there are other things we can still do,” he laments when he realizes Brienne has any intention to leave the comfort of the bed he doesn’t want her to leave at all.

“I need to use the restroom,” she insists, already fishing for a robe hanging over the side of the bed.

“But after that you return to bed,” he insists.

“You don’t get to boss me around in my own home,” Brienne sighs as she ties the belt around her waist.

“Well, it’s supposedly my home from now on as well.”

“Quite fast, don't you think?"

"It took us how long to see the great truth that was in plain sight? I guess everyone in our circle, including the gym, knew before we even had a clue that this right here is where we should have been about a year ago."

"Perhaps, that still doesn't mean we will just jump ten steps ahead."

"I can do nice and slow... as you should know," he says, wriggling his eyebrows at her suggestively.

Brienne rolls her eyes at him. "Whatever."

“You don’t have to bother with the robe anymore, you know? I’ve seen it, and I much enjoyed it, I may add,” he tells her when Brienne stands up.

“Now stop it already,” she grumbles, fighting a blush that only ever fuels Jaime, of course. Though Brienne will have to admit it is nice, to see how their old normalcy of banter and teasing seems to blur just about perfectly into what is supposedly their new kind of normal from now on. 

As though everything just finally fell in place.

So Jaime may have a point that everyone except for them saw the puzzle coming together.

“I was hoping for a nice morning show, you know?” Jaime teases. "After you got some lessons of how not to do it from the terrible stripper man."

“Not all wishes come true," Brienne snorts. 

“But a lot of them did.”

Even those Jaime didn’t know he had, until he found the simple truth telling him that this was something he wanted in a long, long time already.

“So don’t get greedy!” Brienne calls out from the en-suite bathroom. "And I would appreciate it if we made no longer any mention of the bad stripper. Those images are still scourged into my brain."

“I am a Lannister! Lions are always greedy,” he shouts after her, propping his head up on his left arm. "And hey, I can strip for you, too."

“Lions actually only hunt when they really need food,” Brienne points out to him. "And I think I will pass."

“How would you know that about lions?”

“Documentary,” Brienne answers simply.

“You are such a bore!” he shouts. 

Though she certainly isn't one under the sheets - because Brienne of Tarth truly is someone who keeps surprising him over and over again.

“You should know that by now," she huffs. 

“Well, I am greedy for you, I know that by now,” he says, making sure to give Brienne the dirtiest of looks when she comes back out of the bathroom, which has the younger woman stop for a moment, only to duck her head and maneuver over to the window instead.

To think that this is her new present now makes it hard to even remember what stood on the card that came with the box she was so desperate to put away last night.

“Will you keep that kind of talk up from now on, just so that I can prepare?” she asks.

“I will only get worse – unless you answer my needs, of course,” he snickers, cocking an eyebrow at her. 

Brienne shakes her head, glancing out the window, seemingly to distract herself and fight back against the blush betraying her words. However, her attention remains fixed on what she sees outside as her big blue eyes widen.

“Uhm, Jaime?”

“You don’t have to be shy about it that you want that about as much as I do. I mean, I know by now that you don’t hold back all times, far from the wobbly halo wearing angel you appeared to be last night,” Jaime teases, but Brienne insists, “Jaime, come here.”

“Oh, so you are greedy yourself. I am happy to comply…,” he says, peeling himself out of the blankets now as well.

“Don’t forget the pants,” she mutters, her eyes still glued to the window, though.

“Ah, so you want me to strip for you after all. Well, if you have that much fun taking them off again, I suppose I can do that, too,” he snorts, quickly slipping into his boxer briefs before standing up. He walks over to the window where Brienne still glances out, sheer perplex.

“… am I just seeing things or is this real? Because I already thought last night that my eyes were fooling me when Brienne the angel entered the bar,” Jaime gapes.

“If so, I am seeing them, too. But you said you normally never have snow around the season,” Brienne argues, furrowing her eyebrows, still not quite believing it. Just like on Tarth.

_A Christmas miracle indeed._

“And we don’t,” Jaime agrees, blinking at the vastness of white below, swallowing up all of the street, all of the city’s madness when it comes to Christmas decoration. Instead, there is just one decoration, and it is snow, snow, and more snow.

“Well, now we do, it appears.”

Jaime’s face lights up. “We are snowed in! It will take forever to clean the roads.”

“So Tyrion _did_ get his wish granted.”

Perhaps it’s not the most terrible Christmas after all.

And Brienne can tell Sansa about it to put her in a happier mood, granted that Brienne ever gets her phone back from the redhead.

“It appears so. And mine as well, considering,” Jaime ponders.

“Why?” Brienne asks, frowning. She almost jumps when Jaime slips his right arm around her waist, pulling her a little closer to him, thankfully not seeming to mind that he is using his handless arm after all.

Because she certainly doesn’t mind that part at all. 

“Because that means I am spending Christmas with someone I actually want to spend it with,” Jaime explains. “Quite a gift, wouldn’t you agree?”

She smiles at him. “Very much so.”

"You know I still have to give you your actual gift."

"Well, if we remain snowed in, you won't get to it."

"Oh no, that means you will give me the evil eye for being late with the present, huh?"

"What of your plan of having post-Christmas celebration?" she suggests. "Then I would withhold my present for you until then as well."

"Wait, you have a gift for me?"

"Why shouldn't I?" She frowns.

"Well, after that whole yoga pants mess I reckoned I would be getting coals this year."

"Maybe you do," she snickers.

"You wouldn't do that to me, your best friend slash new boyfriend, would you?"

"Probably not," she smiles.

No, it's a gift she knows for a fact Jaime is going to love. And she is already looking forward to see him unwrap it, because she knows that the past won't repeat itself with him.

“Well, be it as it may. So that means we can now spend the morning to think about what we can do, snowed in at your apartment, all by ourselves,” Jaime goes on to say, cocking an eyebrow at her, to which Brienne answers with widening eyes as it comes to her mind, “Oh, I already have an idea.”

“I like the excitement,” he chuckles. 

“We can have a snowball fight later the day,” she chimes. “I didn’t have one in ages.”

“… _that_ was not the suggestion I was expecting,” Jaime argues, making a face. "Or hoping."

“It would be a wasted opportunity, c’mon,” she huffs, tapping him on the bare shoulder.

“I wouldn’t consider it wasted at all if we didn’t leave bed all day long.” Jaime shrugs. 

That would be a day well spent in his book.

“But snow in King’s Landing, on Christmas day, Jaime, that’s something out of the ordinary one should not let go to waste,” Brienne argues.

“How could I possibly refuse if you ask that nicely, hm?” Jaime laughs, but then he takes her elbow to twist her around and pull her in for a passionate kiss. Brienne is still rather caught off-guard at first, after all, she yet has to get used to that kind of attention, that kind of love. Yet, she soon eases herself into the touch and returns the heated kisses in kind, because the way Brienne sees it, she will get used to it rather sooner than later.

Because Brienne is fairly certain that Jaime will see to that.

And of that she is certain as well – she is looking forward to it.

“Though I think the white of snow can wait a while longer,” he mutters between the kisses. “Because I _really_ think we need a bit more time in the white of the sheets.”

“What about the coffee?”

“Can wait.”

“Since when?”

“Since right now,” he says, pulling her even closer. “Truce?”

“Truce,” she breathes, letting herself be pulled back on the bed, and not a single thought travels back to the past, back to the box she was so desperate to hide away. Instead she enjoys the warmth of the now, and leaves the cold of the past where it belongs – not hidden far away, but ignored in some corner she doesn’t care about because there is so much better to focus on in the here and now.

No more looking back in the past, because while the teenage girl is still there, there is now a woman who grew from that who found someone who won't laugh at her when it matters and hold her close when she really needs it.

And the plain truth is that she needs it much more than she ever thought.

“I think that’s the first time we actually get to agree on a truce. Another Christmas miracle!” Jaime chuckles, toying with the belt of her robe.

And Jaime finds that he was actually granted the wish he had for such a long time, because holding Brienne in his arms feels like he came home to a place he yet has to get to know – and he has any intention to do so now that he took up that space and she granted it to him in turn.

_A truce indeed._

He arrived somewhere at last, in her arms, and in her embrace he wants to stay.

“Merry Christmas, Brienne,” Jaime whispers as he presses another kiss to the corner of her mouth. 

“Merry Christmas to you, too, Jaime,” she breathes.

Now, _that_ should certainly become one of his Christmas traditions, but this is a thought Jaime leaves to another day, because now he wants to celebrate Christmas, cherish it, all of it, as it would truly be a waste to let the not at all perfect and yet almost perfect Christmas only just to play Christmas downer.

Because he is home and he doesn’t see himself going anywhere else any time soon.

Because home is where Brienne is.

Home is her.

And in that home he wants to stay.

 

_The End_


End file.
